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THE SEVENTH SHOT 







THE SEVENTH SHOT 


A Detective Story 


BY 

Harry Coverdale 



CHELSEA HOUSE 
79 Seventh Avenue New York City 




Copyright, 1924 
By CHELSEA HOUSE 

The Seventh Shot 


©C1A800508 

9 • 4 # 

(Printed in the United States of America) 

All rights reserved, including that of translation into foreign 
languages, including the Scandinavian. 

RUG 19 '24 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER PAGE 

I. “Brook Trout For Two” .... 11 

II. The Woman in Purple .... 24 

III. The “Tag”. 36 

IV. The Letter of Warning .... 51 

V. Miss Templeton. 63 

VI. The Divided Danger. 72 

VII. The Dark Scene. 80 

VIII. Awaiting the Police. .96 

IX. Reconstructing the Crime . . . 103 

X. Facts and Fancies. 112 

XI. In the Star Dressing Room . . . 123 
XII. The Two Doorways. 131 

XIII. The Initial. 142 

XIV. A Tip—and an Invitation .... 150 

XV. A Morning Call. 156 

XVI. A Scarlet Evening Coat .... 163 














CONTENTS 


<;haptbb page 

XVIL Blind Trails.168 

XVIII. Miss Templeton at Home . . . • 179 

XIX. Glimmers in the Darkness . . . 190 

XX. Checking Up.197 

XXI. Tony’s Report.206 

XXII. “Rita the Daredevil”.215 

XXIII. ’Twixt the Cup and the Lip . . . 223 

XXIV. What Sybil Had Hidden .... 229 

XXV. New Developments.242 

XXVI. Wrenn’s Story.248 

XXVII. An Incriminating Letter .... 263 

XXVHI. A Strange Summons.271 

XXIX.. Through the Night.279 

XXX. The Whisper in the Dark .... 284 

XXXI. Tony Does His Bit.292 

XXXII. The Lost Clew.302 

XXXIII. The False Gods Go.315 













THE SEVENTH SHOT 

CHAPTER I 
“brook trout for two” 

I T was twelve o’clock—a hot, sunny noon in the 
latter part of August. Broadway blazed with the 
last fiery effort of the passing summer; there was a 
steady stream of humanity pouring up and down on 
either side of the clanging cars, and occasionally 
swirling between them. In spite of the temperature. 
New York was as fervently busy as usual, especially 
here on what is affectionately known as the Rialto. 
For in nearly every theater in the Forties rehearsals 
had begun, and those actors who were not already 
employed were frantically hunting jobs. Gone the 
brief weeks in which they had forgotten calcium and 
make-up boxes; it was nearly September—time to 
work. 

Chorus girls, half dead from three hours of cease¬ 
less dancing, came hurrying from stage doors, wip¬ 
ing their dripping faces and talking shrilly of new 
steps, tired legs, and the brutalities of their stage 
managers. “Principals,” in scarcely less haste, re¬ 
paired to one of the big restaurants for a cold buffet 
lunch, wearing the blank, concentrated expression 
that is born of trying to memorize lines or to 


12 


THE SEVENTH SHOT 


estimate the cost of new costumes. Clean-shaven 
young men, all dressed precisely alike, forgathered 
on street corners or plunged pallidly into cafes. 
Shabby little actresses, out of work and wearing 
their best clothes of last year, scurried anxiously 
from agent to agent. 

A few stars sank wearily into touring cars or 
limousines and flew homeward for an hour and a 
half of rest and refreshment before the long, grind¬ 
ing, sweltering afternoon. Stage managers, with 
scripts sticking out of their pockets and a grim and 
absent glare in their eyes, strode along, mentally 
blue-penciling the prompt book and cursing the com¬ 
pany. Authors crept miserably away to eat without 
appetite and wonder if there would be any play at 
all left by the date of the opening. In short, 
theatrical Broadway was at one of its most vigor¬ 
ous seasons of activity, and to walk along it was 
like turning the pages of a dramatic newspaper. 

At the side door of one of the big, cool, luxurious 
hotels extensively patronized by the profession when 
it has enough money in its pockets, two young 
women nearly ran into each other, laughed, and ex¬ 
changed greetings: 

“Miss Legaye! How nice to see you again!” 

“It has been ages, hasn’t it? Are you lunching 
here, too. Miss Merivale?” 

“I hardly know,” returned the younger and taller 
girl, adding, with a frank laugh: “I was wonder¬ 
ing whether it would be too sinfully extravagant 


“BROOK TROUT FOR TWO” 43 

to blow myself to a gilt-edged meal all alone. How¬ 
ever, I believe I had about succumbed to tempta¬ 
tion; I have a manager to see this afternoon, and I 
really think I should fortify myself.” 

“Lunch with me,” suggested Kitty Legaye. “I 
hate my own society, and I am all alone.” 

“For a wonder!” laughed the other. “Yes, Fd 
love to, if you’ll let it be Dutch. Fve been up and 
down a thousand pairs of stairs this morning, and 
Fm nearly dead.” 

They went together into one of the most com¬ 
fortable dining rooms in the city. They chose a little 
table so placed that an electric fan, artificially hid¬ 
den behind flowering plants, swept it with a very 
fair imitation of aromatic summer winds. 

Miss Legaye, who always knew exactly what she 
wanted, waved aside the menu proffered by the 
waiter and rapidly ordered: “Brook trout in aspic 
for two. Fll tell you the rest later.” 

Then she tossed off her fur neckpiece and turned 
to the other girl. 

“I never asked you if you liked trout!” she ex¬ 
claimed, in a sweet, rather high voice which her 
admirers called “larklike.” “Now, that’s so like me! 
Do you?” 

“Very much,” said her companion, smiling. “I 
don’t often get it, though. You are looking awfully 
well. Miss Legaye!” 

“I am always well,” replied Kitty Legaye. 

She was an exceedingly pretty woman, already 


14 


THE SEVENTH SHOT 


in her early thirties, but even by daylight she did 
not look more than twenty-five. On the stage, with 
the glamour of rouge and footlights to enhance her 
naturally youthful appearance, she passed easily for 
a girl in her teens. Very small, very dainty, with 
the clear, ivory-white skin which keeps its fresh¬ 
ness so well, big dark eyes, brown curls, and a very 
red, tiny, full mouth, she still made an enchanting 
ingenue and captivated every one who saw her. 

To-day she was entirely charming in one of the 
innocently sophisticated frocks she particularly loved 
to wear—a creation of black and white, most daring 
in effect, though demurely simple in cut. Always 
pale by nature, she was doubly so now from fatigue 
and heat, yet she still looked young and lovely, and 
her smile had the irresistible and infectious quality 
of a child’s. 

If at times her eye grew a bit cynical or her 
pretty mouth a trifle hard, such slips in self-control 
occurred seldom. As a rule she kept a rigid guard 
upon herself and her expressions, not only because 
an obviously ugly mood or reflection made her look 
older, but because, if permitted to become a habit, 
it would be perilously and permanently aging. 

Kitty Legaye was too truly clever not to know 
that her one valuable asset, both as an actress and 
a woman, was her quality—or illusion—of youth. 
When she lost that, she shrewdly judged, she 
would lose everything. She was not a sufficiently 
brilliant actress to continue successfully in char- 


“BROOK TROUT FOR TWO” 


15 


acter work after her looks had gone. And so far as 
her personal and private life was concerned she 
had lived too selfishly to have made a very cozy 
human place for herself in the world. 

Not that she was a disagreeable or an unkind 
woman; she could even be generous on occasion, 
and she was almost always pleasant to her asso¬ 
ciates; hut the spirit of calculation which she 
strove so hard to keep out of her face had left its 
mark upon her life. She had few close friends, 
though she liked many persons and many persons 
liked her. She had long since drifted away from 
her own people, and she had never been willing to 
give up her independence for the sake of any man. 
So, in spite of a great number of admirers and a re¬ 
markably handsome salary, her existence seemed 
just a little barren and chilly sometimes. 

We have said that she never had been willing to 
give up her independence. That had been true all 
her life until now. To-day she was considering just 
that proposition. Did she care enough, at last, to 
marry? Love—she had had no small measime of 
that all her life, for Kitty was by way of being 
temperamental; but marriage! That was another 
and a vastly more serious matter. 

She looked almost wistfully across the table at 
Sibyl Merivale. For a moment she had an unac¬ 
countable impulse to confide in her. She wished 
she knew her well enough. She looked, Kitty 
thought, like the sort of girl who would understand 


16 


THE SEVENTH SHOT 


about this sort of thing—loving enough to get 
married, and—and all that. 

Sybil was as unlike Miss Legaye as she well could 
be. She was tall, and built strongly though slen¬ 
derly, like a young Artemis, and her eyes were very 
clear and starry and blue. Her hair was of that 
rare and delicious shade known as blonde cendree, 
and the silvery, ashen nimbus about her face made 
her brown eyebrows and lashes elfective. Her skin 
was very fair, and her color came and went sensi¬ 
tively. She was not a beauty; her nose was de¬ 
cidedly retrousse, and her mouth too large. But 
she was unquestionably sweet and wholesome and 
attractive, and her lovely forehead and the splendid 
breadth between her eyes suggested both character 
and intelligence. 

Kitty looked disapprovingly at the dust-colored 
linen dress she wore; it was far too close to the 
tint of her hair to be becoming. Blondes, thought 
Kitty, could wear almost any color on the face of the 
earth except—just that! However, she felt rather 
pleased than otherwise that Miss Merivale was not 
looking her best. When she appeared in public with 
another woman, she was well satisfied to have the 
other woman hadly dressed. She herself never was. 

Both women were honestly and healthily hungry, 
and talked very little until they were half through 
the trout. Then they met each other’s eyes and 
laughed a little. 

“Thank goodness you don’t pretend not to have 


“BROOK TROUT FOR TWO” 


17 


an appetite, like most girls!” said Miss Legaye. 
“I’m starved, and not a bit ashamed of it! Boned 
squab, after this, waiter, and romaine salad.” 

“If you let me eat so much I shall be dull and 
stupid,” declared Sybil. “And I want to be extra 
brilliant to talk to my manager. I simply have to 
hypnotize him into engaging me!” 

“Who is he?” 

“Altheimer.” 

“Altheimer! You aren’t going into musical com¬ 
edy, surely?” 

Sybil flushed a bit and bent over her plate to hide 
her discomfort. 

“I—I’m going into anything I can get,” she an¬ 
swered in a low voice. Then she smiled and went 
on more bravely: “I’ve been out of work since 
March, Miss Lagaye. Beggars can’t be choosers.” 

“Oh, dear—how horrid!” Miss Legaye felt sin¬ 
cerely sympathetic—for the moment. “It’s a thou¬ 
sand pities that you have to go into one of the Alt¬ 
heimer shows. You can really act, and there— 
well, of course, he doesn’t care about whether you 
can act or not; he’ll take you for your figure.” And 
she looked the other girl over candidly. 

Sybil flushed again, but answered promptly: “I 
think he has some sort of part for me—a real part. 
He knows I don’t sing or dance. You are rehears¬ 
ing, aren’t you. Miss Legaye?” 

“Yes; with Alan Mortimer.” 

“I wish you’d tell me what you think of him!” 


18 


THE SEVENTH SHOT 


said Sybil, with interest. “He’s such a mystery to 
every one. His first play, isn’t it? As a star, I 
mean.” 

“Yes; Dukane is trying an experiment—starring 
an unknown actor in a Broadway production. Pretty 
daring, isn’t it? But Dukane doesn’t make many 
mistakes. He knows Alan Mortimer will make good. 
He’s got a lot of personality, and he’s extremely at¬ 
tractive, I think. I—saw a good deal of him down 
at Nantucket during the summer.” 

Kitty Legaye never blushed, but there was a cer¬ 
tain soft hesitancy about the way in which she 
uttered the simple words that was, for her, the 
equivalent of a blush. Sybil, noting it, privately 
concluded that there had been something like a ro¬ 
mance “down at Nantucket during the summer.” 

Being a nice girl, and a tactful one, she said 
gently: 

“Is it a good play, do you think?” 

Miss Legaye shrugged her shoulders carelessly; 
the moment of sentiment had passed. 

“It’s melodrama,” she rejoined; “the wildest sort. 
‘Boots and Saddles’ is the name, and it’s by Carlton; 
now you know.” 

They both laughed. Carlton was a playwright of 
fluent and flexible talent, who made it his business 
always to know the public pulse. 

“What time is your appointment with Altheimer?” 

“Quarter past one.” 

“What an ungodly hour! Doesn’t the man ever 


“BROOK TROUT FOR TWO” 


19 


eat? But finish your lunch comfortably; if you’re 
late he’ll appreciate you all the more. Besides-” 

She paused, regarding the girl cautiously and 
critically; and that evanescently calculating look 
drifted across her face for the space of a breath. 

“Besides what?” demanded Sybil. ‘Tf I lose that 
part, I’ll sue you for a job! Besides what?” 

Kitty, for all her pretty, impulsive ways, rarely 
did things without consideration; so it was with 
quite slow deliberation that she answered Sybil’s 
question with another: 

“Would you like to come with Alan Mortimer?” 

“Mercy!” The girl put down her knife and 
fork and stared with huge blue eyes. “Do you 
mean to say that there’s a part open—after re¬ 
hearsing ten days?” 

“How do you know how long we’ve been re¬ 
hearsing?” queried the older woman. 

Sybil grew delicately pink. “I know a man in 
the company,” she confessed, laughing shyly. 
“Norman Crane—oh, he’s only got a little bit of a 
part; perhaps you haven’t noticed him, even. It’s 
a big company, isn’t it? But he’s quite keen 
about your play.” 

“Norman Crane?” repeated the other thought¬ 
fully. “Why, yes, I know him. A tall, clean¬ 
looking fellow with reddish hair and a nice laugh?” 

“That’s Norman! He isn’t a great actor, but— 
he’s quite a dear.” 

Miss Legaye nodded slowly, still regarding her. 



20 


THE SEVENTH SHOT 


The notion which had come to her a minute before 
seemed to her more and more markedly a good 
notion, a wise notion—^nay, even possibly an in¬ 
spired notion! Mortimer’s leading woman, Grace 
Templeton, was a brilliant blonde with Isoldelike 
emotions, and Kitty had loathed and feared her 
from the first, for the new star swung in an orbit 
that was somewhat willful and eccentric, to say 
the very least of it, and his taste in feminine beauty 
was unprejudiced by a bias toward any special 
type. 

For a long time Kitty had yearned to get rid of 
Miss Templeton. If the thing could possibly be 
managed, here was a girl of undoubted talent—she 
had seen her act and knew that she had twice the 
ability of the average young player—presentable, 
but not too radiantly pretty, and proper and con¬ 
ventional and all that—not at all the sort of girl 
who would be likely to have an affair with the star. 
And then, if she was interested in young Crane, 
why, it would be altogether perfect! 

“So you know Norman Crane,” she said. “Then 
if you did come into the company, that would make 
it particularly nice for you, wouldn’t it?” 

“Why, yes,” the girl returned, frankly enough. 
“We’re quite good friends, though I don’t see much 
of him these days. We used to play together in 
stock out West two years ago; we were both most 
awful duffers at acting.” 

Kitty Legaye nodded as though fairly well satis* 


“BROOK TROUT FOR TWO” 


21 


fied. It was on the tip of her tongue to say that 
she would try to get Sybil a small part in the 
play, with the chance to imderstudy Miss Tem¬ 
pleton—it was all she could even partially promise 
until she had conferred with Dukane and Mortimer 
—when her attention was sharply distracted by the 
sight of two men who had just entered the room 
and who were looking about them in choice of a 
table. She uttered a quick exclamation, as quickly 
suppressed. 

“Look at those two men standing near the 
door!” she said. “There, close to the buffet. What 
do you think of them? Do tell me; Fve a reason 
for asking.” 

Sybil’s eyes followed hers. 

The two men were both noticeable, hut one of 
them was so striking in appearance that one hardly 
had eyes for any one else near by. He was a very 
tall, very broad, very conspicuous type of man. 
Everything about him was superlative—even the 
air of brooding ill temper which for the moment 
he seemed to wear. He was exceedingly dark, 
with swarthy coloring, coal-black hair, thick and 
tumbled, and deeply set black eyes. His features 
were strong and heavy, but well shaped. Indeed, 
he was in his general effect unquestionably hand¬ 
some, and the impression which he made was 
one not lightly to he felt nor quickly to be forgotten. 

“Well?” insisted Miss Legaye impatiently, as Sybil 
did not immediately speak. “I asked you what 


22 


THE SEVENTH SHOT 


you thought of him.” This time she did not say 
“them,” but Sybil did not notice the altered word. 

The girl continued to look at the tall, dark man 
as though she were mesmerized, and when she 
spoke it was in a curious, detached tone, as she 
might have spoken if she were thinking aloud. 

“He is a very strange man,” she said. “He 
does not belong here in a Broadway restaurant. 
He should be somewhere where things are wild 
and wonderful and free—and perhaps rather ter¬ 
rible. I think he belongs in—is it Egypt? He 
would be quite splendid in Egypt. Or—^the 

prairies-” She spoke dreamily as she stared 

at him. 

“You look as though he were a ghost, not a man 1” 
exclaimed Kitty, with a laugh. “I must tell him 
what you said-” 

“Tell him?” repeated Sybil, rousing herself. “You 
know him, then?” 

“My dear child,” said Kitty Legaye, “that is Alan 
Mortimer!” 

At the same moment Mortimer caught sight of 
her and strode toward her, passing between the 
fragile little limcheon tables with the energy of a 
whirlwind. 

“Guess what has happened now!” he exclaimed 
in a deep but singularly clear and beautifully 
pitched voice. “Dukane has fired Templeton, and 
apparently I open little more than two weeks from 




“BROOK TROUT FOR TWO” 23 

to-night without a leading woman! What do you 
know about that!” 

“Without a leading woman? No, you don’t, 
either,” promptly rejoined Kitty, the inspired. She 
always liked a neat climax for a scene, especially 
when she could supply it herself. “I’ve just picked 
out Miss Merivale to play Lucille” 

Breathless and amazed, Sybil locked up to meet 
his eyes. They were dark and piercing. At first 
she thought only of that, and of their fire and 
beauty. Then something obscurely evil seemed for 
a transient second to look out of them. “What an 
awful man!” she said to herself. But he was hold¬ 
ing out his hand. 

“Hid you think of that all by yourself. Kit?” 
he said. A faint but rather attractive smile lighten¬ 
ing his moody eyes. “How do you do—^Lucille? 
You may consider the engagement—ah—confirmed.” 

But Sybil, as she drew her hand away, felt 
vaguely frightened—she could not have told why. 


CHAPTER II 


THE WOMAN IN PURPLE 

M ortimer had been drinking, else he would 
never have assumed the entire responsibility] 
of engaging Sybil Merivale for the leading part in 
his play. When sober, he had a very wholesome 
respect for Dukane, the producing manager who 
had discovered him and who was “backing him 
blind” to the tune of many thousands of dollars. 
But when he had even a little too much to drink, 
the man’s whole personality and viewpoint under¬ 
went a metamorphosis. He became arrogant, self- 
assertive, unmanageable. Eventually it was this, 
as even his friends and adherents were wont to 
prophesy, which would be the means of his down¬ 
fall. 

Now, though Dukane himself stood at his elbow, 
the actor, with a swagger which he had too much 
sense to use on the stage or when he was entirely 
himself, cried: 

“Let us sit down here with you, Kitty, and 
we’ll drink the health of the new Lucille” Kitty 
smiled indulgently as she watched him seat himself 
and give a whispered order to the waiter which 
presently resulted in the party being served with 
high balls. Meanwhile, as Dukane also sat down, 
Kitty introduced him to Sybil. 


THE WOMAN IN PURPLE 


25 


Dukane was short and squarely built, with gray 
hair and steely eyes, a face as smooth and bland 
as baby’s, and an air so gentle and unassuming 
that his occasional bursts of biting sarcasm came 
upon his victims as a shock. His gaze, clear yet 
inscrutable, swept Sybil Merivale in the moment 
taken up by his introduction to her. He was 
used to thus rapidly appraising the material pre¬ 
sented him. 

He was inclined to approve of her appearance. 
She was not startlingly beautiful, but the hair 
was rmusual and would light up well. She carried 
her head properly, too, and her low-voiced “How 
do you do, Mr. Dukane!” was quite nicely pitched. 
It would be worth while hearing her read the part, 
at any rate. For once Mortimer had not too crassly 
put his foot in it, as he was apt to do after four 
or five high balls. 

That the actor had taken a good deal too much 
upon himself in practically engaging Miss Merivale 
without even consulting his superior troubled Du¬ 
kane not a whit. He was not a little man, and he 
did not have to bluster in order to assert his 
authority. His actors and actresses were to him 
so many indifferently controlled children. When 
they said or did absurd things, he usually let 
them rave. If they really became troublesome or 
impertinent—as Miss Templeton had been that morn¬ 
ing—he discharged them with the utmost urbanity 
and firmness. 


26 


THE SEVENTH SHOT 


He sat down and quietly told the waiter to 
bring him cold meat and coffee, while Mortimer 
ordered more high balls. “Miss Merivale can come 
back with us and read the part in the last act,” 
Dukane said, sipping his coffee. “I shan’t ask the 
company to go through the early part of the 
play again to-day. In any case”—and he smiled 
at the girl pleasantly—“in any case, Miss Merivale 
will look the part.” 

“That’s more than Templeton ever did!” ex¬ 
claimed Kitty Legaye, with open spite. 

Dukane smiled once more. “Miss Templeton,” 
he said, “is rather too—er—sophisticated to play 
Lucille, She is growing out of those very girlish 
leading parts.” 

“Why don’t you say,” interposed Kitty sharply, 
“that she’s too old? She is—and, what’s more, 
she looks it!” 

“She’s a ripping handsome woman, all the same,” 
declared Alan Mortimer, scowling into his half- 
emptied glass. 

Kitty bit her lip. “Of course you would be sorry 
to see her go!” she began. 

“Who said I was sorry?” demanded the actor 
rather rudely. “I am not; I’m glad. She was 
getting to be a nuisance-He checked him¬ 

self, a glimmer of something tike shame saving him 
in time. He turned to Sybil Merivale, and there 
was a warm light in his black eyes as he added: 
“I’m growing more glad every minute.” 



THE WOMAN IN PURPLE 


27 


Sybil was uncomfortable. She hated this man 
and feared him; she hated the tone of the talk, 
the atmosphere of the table. She had a violent 
instinct of repugnance when she thought of join¬ 
ing the company. And yet—and yet a leading part, 
and on Broadway, and under Dukane! She could 
not, she dared not lose so wonderful a chance. 
Her big blue eyes were eager and troubled both 
at once. 

Dukane watched the play of expression in her 
sensitive face. “Mobile mouth—quick emotions— 
excellent eyes.” He went over these assets men¬ 
tally. Aloud he said, in the nice, impersonally 
friendly tone with which he won people whenever 
he had the fancy: “You need only read the part, 
you know. Miss Merivale. You’re not committed 
to anything.” 

Sybil looked at him gratefully; he seemed to 
read her thoughts. All at once, with a surge 
back of her usual gay courage, she cried, laughing: 

“Committed! I only wish I were—or, rather, 
that you were, Mr. Dukane!” 

“What’s that?” exclaimed Mortimer, a little 
thickly. “Course he’s committed! You’re under 
contract. Miss—Miss M-Merivale. Word as good 
as his bond—eh, Dukane?” 

He was deeply flushed and his eyes glittered. 
In his excitement Sybil found him detestable. 
Fancy having to play opposite that! 

“Suppose you eat something,” suggested Dukane, 


28 


THE SEVENTH SHOT 


pushing a plate with a piece of cold beef on it 
in his direction. “Oh, yes, you do want it; you’ve 
had a hard morning. Eat it, there’s a good fellow.” 

“A-all right,” muttered Mortimer, attacking the 
beef somewhat unsteadily. “Must keep up m’ 
strength, I s’pose.” 

A waiter leaned down to him and murmured 
something in French. 

“Eh?” said Mortimer. “Come again, George. 
Try Spanish; I know the greaser lingo a bit.” 

The waiter spoke again in halting English. The 
others could hardly help hearing part of what he 
said. It concerned a “lady in mauve—stable by the 
window—just a minute, monsieur.” 

“Oh, damn!” ejaculated Alan Mortimer, and im¬ 
mediately directed an apologetic murmur toward 
Sybil. He got up, and walking with surprising 
steadiness and that lithe, animal grace so char¬ 
acteristic of him, made his way toward a table 
where a woman sat waiting with an expectant face. 

“Grace Templeton!” exclaimed Kitty under her 
breath. Her brown eyes snapped angrily. “I didn’t 
see her before—did you, Mr. Dukane?” 

“I saw her when I first came in,” answered the 
manager quietly. “That hair is so conspicuous. 
Really I think she should begin to confine herself 
to adventuress parts. She is no longer the romantic 
type.” 

''And the dress!” Kitty shivered with a delicate 
suggestion of jarred nerves or outraged taste. 


THE WOMAN IN PURPLE 


29 


Dukane dropped his eyes to hide the twinkle 
in them. It was true that even in that lunch-time 
Broadway assemblage, in which brilliant color 
combinations in the way both of hair and of 
garments proclaimed right and left the daring and 
the resourcefulness of womankind. Miss Templeton 
was a imique figure. Her hair was of a magnificent 
metallic gold, and a certain smoldering fire in her 
black-fringed gray eyes and a general impression 
she gave of violent and but half-controlled emotions 
saved her beauty from being merely cheap and 
artificial and made it vivid and compelling. A 
passionate, unforgetable woman, and her gown, 
sensational as it was, somehow expressed her. 

The French waiter had drawn upon his fund 
of native tact in calling it mauve. It was, as a 
matter of fact, a sharp and thunderous purple— 
the sort of color which is only permissible in 
stained glass or an illuminated tenth century 
missal. It was a superb shade, but utterly impos¬ 
sible for any sort of modern clothes. It blazed 
insolently against the massed greenery of the res¬ 
taurant window. A persistent ray of yellow August 
sunshine, pushing its way past the cunningly con¬ 
trived leafy screen, fell full upon it and upon the 
burnished golden hair above it. In that celestial 
spotlight Miss Templeton was almost too dazzling 
for unshaded mortal eyes. 

Now, as she sat looking up at Mortimer, who 
stood beside her table, her expression was in keep- 


30 


THE SEVENTH SHOT 


ing with the gown and the hair. It was violent, 
conspicuous, crudely intense. Alan Mortimer’s ex¬ 
pression, in its way, was as violent as hers. They 
looked, the two of them, as though they could 
have torn each other’s eyes out with fierce and 
complete satisfaction. 

“Am I very late, Mr. Dukane?” said an agree¬ 
ably pitched voice just behind Sybil. 

Dukane started and raised his eyes. His face 
brightened. 

“Barrison, my dear fellow, I am glad you came! 
Do you know, you were so late that I had almost 
forgotten you! Miss Legaye, let me present Mr. 
Barrison; Miss Merivale, Mr. Barrison.” 

The newcomer smiled and sat down at the al¬ 
ready crowded little table. 

“If you say you had forgotten me,” he pro¬ 
tested, “I shall think you did not really need me 
at all, and that would be a hard blow to my 
vanity.” 

“Nonsense!” said Dukane. “Nothing could touch 
the vanity of a dyed-in-the-wool detective. What 
are you going to have, Barrison?” 

“I have lunched, thanks. If that is coffee—^yes, 
I will have a demi-tasse. I thought Mr. Mortimer 
was to be with you, Mr. Dukane.” 

“He is talking to Miss Templeton over there.” 

Barrison’s eyes darted quickly to the other table. 
“Your leading woman, is she not?” 

“She was,” said Dukane calmly. “At present 


THE WOMAN IN PURPLE 


31 


we are not sure whether we have any leading 
woman or not—are we. Miss Merivale?” And he 
looked at her kindly. 

“And, what is more,” said Kitty Legaye ir¬ 
ritably, “we shall never find out at this rate. Do 
you people realize”—she glanced at a tiny gold 
wrist watch—“that it is nearly two, and that our 
rehearsal-” 

“Nearly two!” Sybil’s exclamation was one of 
real dismay. “And my engagement with Mr. 
Altheimer- Oh!” 

“Altheimer, eh?” Dukane looked at her with 
fresh interest. Whether a manager wants an 
actress or not, it always makes him prick up his 
ears to hear of another who may want her. “Tele¬ 
phone him that you have been asked to rehearse 
for me to-day, and that”—^he paused, considering— 
“that you personally look upon your contract as 
very nearly signed.” 

“Oh, Mr. Dukane!” Sybil flushed brilliantly. 
At that moment she forgot her dread of being in 
Mortimer’s company; she was conscious of pure 
joy and of nothing else. 

“There—run along and phone him. You under¬ 
stand,” he added cautiously, “I’m not really de¬ 
pendable. If you are very bad, I shall say I never 
thought of engaging you.” 

“I won’t be,” she laughed valiantly, and sped 
away in the direction of the telephone booths. 
Dukane turned to watch the way she walked. 


32 


THE SEVENTH SHOT 


In a second he nodded. “Can hurry without 
scampering,” he murmured critically, “and doesn’t 
swing her arms about H’m! Yes, yes; very good.” 

“What do you really think of her?” asked Kitty, 
leaning forward. “You know she is my discovery.” 

“My dear girl, who am I, a mere worm of a 
manager, to say? I haven’t seen her work yet. 
She has carriage and a voice, but she may lose 
her head on the stage and she may read Lucille 
as though she were reciting the multiplication table. 
I should say she was intelligent, but one never 
knows. I engaged a woman once who was all 
dignity and fine forehead and bumps of perception 
and the manner bom and all the rest of it; and 
when it came to her big scene, she chewed gum 
and giggled. I am too old ever to know anything 
definitely. We must wait and see.” 

“She is charming to look at,” Barrison ventured. 

“Ah, you think so?” said the manager quickly. 
“I am inclined to like her looks myself. And 
she has youth—youth!” He shook his head half 
wistfully. “Here comes Mortimer back again, 
and in a worse temper, by the powers, than when 
he went!” 

The actor was evidently in a black mood. He 
made no reference to the woman he had just left, 
but stood like an incarnate thundercloud beside his 
empty chair and addressed the others in a voice 
that was distinctly surly in spite of its naturally 
melodious inflections: 


THE WOMAN IN PURPLE 


33 


“What are we waiting for, anyway? Hello, Bar- 
rison! Let’s get back to rehearsal.” 

“My own idea exactly,” said Dukane. “As soon 

as Miss Merivale returns- Ah, here she comes! 

Waiter-” 

“This is my party,” remonstrated Kitty. 

“Rubbish! I feed my flock. Barrison, you are 
of the flock, too, for the occasion. How do you 
like being associated with the profession?” 

The young detective laughed. Dukane looked at 
him with friendliness. The manager was a man 
who liked excellence of all kinds, even when it was 
out of his line. Barrison’s connection with the 
forthcoming play, “Boots and Saddles,” was a purely 
technical one. A vital point in the drama was 
the identification of a young soldier by his finger 
prints. Dukane never permitted the critics, pro¬ 
fessional or amateur, to catch him at a disad¬ 
vantage in details of this kind. He knew Barrison 
slightly, having met him at the Lambs’ Club, and 
found him an agreeable fellow and a gentleman, 
as well as an acknowledged expert in his profes¬ 
sion. So he had asked him to show the exact 
Bertillon procedure, that there might be no awk¬ 
wardness or crudity in the development of the 
stage situation. 

Barrison himself was much entertained by this 
fleeting association with the seductive and mys¬ 
terious world “behind the scenes.” His busy life 
left him small time for amusement, and for that 




34 


THE SEVENTH SHOT 


reason he was the more interested when he came 
upon a hit of professional work which was two 
thirds play. 

He was a quiet-seeming chap, with innocent blue 
eyes, a lazy, pleasant manner, and a very disconcert¬ 
ing speed of action on occasion. His superiors 
said that half of his undoubted success came from 
his unexpectedness. It is certain that no one, 
on meeting him casually and socially, would ever 
have suspected that he was one of the most re¬ 
doubtable, keen-brained, and steel-nerved detectives 
in all New York. 

The hill was paid, and every one was standing 
as Sybil came back. She was a little breathless 
and flushed, and Dukane, with a new note of ap¬ 
probation on his mental tablets, got a very good 
idea of what she would look like with a bit of 
make-up. 

“I told Mr. Altheimer,” she cried eagerly. “And 
he was quite cross—^yes, really quite cross! I was 
ever so flattered. I don’t believe he wanted me 
one bit till he thought there was a chance of Mr. 
Dukane’s wanting me.” She laughed joyously. 

“Very likely, very likely,” Dukane murmured. 
“Why—what is the matter. Miss Merivale?” 

For the pretty color had faded from Sybil’s sen¬ 
sitive face. Her big blue eyes looked suddenly dark 
and distressed. “What is the matter?” the manager 
repeated, watching her closely. 


THE WOMAN IN PURPLE 35 

She pulled herself together and managed a 
tremulous smile. 

“Some one is walking over my grave,” she said 
lightly. 

But as she turned to leave the dining room with 
the rest, she could not help another backward 
glance at the brilliant figure in purple with the 
golden sunbeam across her golden hair, and the 
odd look which had just terrified her. 

Barrison, accustomed to noticing everything, fol¬ 
lowed her gaze, and, seeing the expression on Miss 
Templeton’s face, drew his lips into a noiseless 
whistle. For there was murder in that look; Jim 
Barrison had seen it before on other faces, and 
he knew it by sight. 

As for Sybil, the memory of the woman in purple 
haunted her all the way to the theater—the woman 
in purple with the black-fringed eyes full of living, 
blazing, elemental hate. 


CHAPTER III 


THE “tag” 

T he stage entrance of the Mirror Theater was 
on a sort of court or alley which ran at right 
angles from one of the side streets near Times 
Square. A high iron gateway which barred it 
except during theatrical working hours stood half 
open, and the little party made their way over 
the stone flags in the cool gloom cast by the 
shadow of the theater itself and the neighboring 
buildings—restaurants, offices, and shops. It looked 
really mysterious in its sudden dusk, after the mid¬ 
day glare of the open street. 

“Do you know,” said Jim Barrison, “this is the 
first time I have ever gone into a theater by 
the stage door!” 

“What a record!” laughed Miss Legaye. She 
was in excellent spirits, and inclined to flirt dis¬ 
creetly with the good-looking and well-mannered 
detective. “And so you never had a stage-door 
craze in all your properly conducted life! Don’t 
you think it’s high time you re—^no, it isn’t re¬ 
formed I mean, but the reverse of reformed. Any¬ 
way, you should make up for lost time, Mr. 
Barrison. Ah, Roberts! I suppose you thought 
we were never coming. Every one else here?” 


THE “TAG 


37 


She was speaking to the stage doorkeeper, a 
thickset man of middle age, with a stolid face 
that lighted up somewhat as she addressed him. 
He did not answer, but beamed vacuously at her. 
She was always charming to him, and he adored 
her. 

They went on into the theater. Barrison was 
taken in tow by Dukane. “Hello, Willie! Mr. 
Barrison, this is Mr. Coster, my stage manager, 
and I am inclined to dislike him, he knows so 
much more than I do. Mr. Barrison is a detective, 
and has come to help us with those finger-print 
scenes, Willie.” 

“Pleased to meet you,” said Willie, absently 
offering a limp, damp hand. “Gov’nor, is it true 
you’ve canned G. T.?” 

“Quite true,” said Dukane cheerfully. “Let 
me present you to Miss Merivale. She will rehearse 
Lucille” 

“Lord!” groaned Willie, who was hot and tired 
and disposed to waste no time on tact. “About 
two weeks before-” 

Mortimer lurched forward. “Say!” he began 
belligerently. “She’s my leading lady—see? Any 
one who doesn’t like-” 

“Oh, go ’way and take a nap!” interrupted Willie, 
without heat. He was no respecter of persons. 
“So thaVs it! All right, gov’nor. I’m glad to see 
any sort of a Lucille show up, anyhow. Even if 



38 


THE SEVENTH SHOT 


she’s bad, she’ll be better than nothing. No offense, 
Miss Merivale.” 

‘T quite understand,” said Sybil, so sweetly that 
Willie turned all the way round to look her over 
once more with his pale, anxious eyes. 

“Come on, folks; they’re all waiting,” he said, 
and led the way onto the big, bare stage. 

Willie Coster was a small, nervous man with 
a cynical pose and the heart of a child. His scant 
hair was sandy, and his features unbeautiful, but 
he was a good, clever, and hard-working little chap, 
and even the companies he trained were fond of 
him. He constantly and loudly proclaimed his dis¬ 
gust with all humanity, especially the humanity of 
the theaters; but he was usually broke because 
he hated to refuse a “touch,” and every one on 
earth called him Willie. 

He was a remarkable stage manager. He was a 
true artist, was Willie Coster, and he poured his 
soul into his work. After every first night he got 
profoundly drunk and stayed so for a week. Other¬ 
wise, he explained quite seriously—and as every 
one, including Dukane, could quite believe—^he 
would have collapsed from nervous strain. 

Only a few electric lights had been turned on. 
The stage looked dim and dingy, and the auditorium 
was a vast abyss of unfathomable blackness. Close 
to the edge of the stage, where the unlighted electric 
footlights made a dully beaded curve, stood a small 
table littered with the four acts of the play and 


THE “TAG” 


39 


some loose sheets of manuscript, presided over by a 
slim little youth who was Coster’s assistant. This 
was the prompt table, whence rehearsals were, 
technically speaking, conducted. As a matter of 
fact, Willie Coster never stayed there more than two 
minutes at a time. 

The company had already assembled. They 
looked hot, resentful, and apprehensive. They 
stood around in small groups, fanning themselves 
with newspapers and handkerchiefs, and making 
pessimistic conjectures as to what was going to 
happen next. 

Every one knew that something had gone wrong 
between Templeton and the management, and col¬ 
lectively they could not make up their minds 
whether they were glad or sorry. She had been 
the leading woman of the show, and every one felt 
a trifle nervous until reassured that another lead 
would be forthcoming. 

It was Claire McAllister, one of the “extra ladies,” 
who first recognized Sybil. 

“Gee, ain’t that the Merivale girl?” she ex¬ 
claimed to the young man who played a junior 
officer in one very small scene. “I saw her in a 
real part once, and she got away with it in good 
shape, too.” 

The young man to whom she spoke looked up, 
startled, and then sprang forward eagerly, his eyes 
glowing. 

“Sybil!” he cried gladly. 


40 


THE SEVENTH SHOT 


She turned quickly, and, laughing and flushing 
in her beautiful frank way, held out hath her 
hands to him. 

“Isn’t it luck, Norman?” she exclaimed gleefully. 
“I’m to have a chance at Lucille T 

Alan Mortimer had scarcely opened his lips since 
leaving the restaurant. Now, with a very lowering 
look, he swung his tall figure forward, confronting 
Norman Crane. 

“I don’t think I remember you,” he remarked, 
with an insulting inflection. “Not in the cast, are 
you?” 

Norman, flushing scarlet, started to retort angrily, 
but Dukane stopped him with a calm hand upon 
his arm. 

“All right, all right, my boy,” he said evenly. 
“You’re in the cast, all right; but—come, come! 
We are rehearsing a play to-day, and not discussing 
personalities.” 

In some occult fashion he contrived to convey 
his meaning to young Crane. It was not the 
smallest of Dukane’s undoubted and unique talents; 
he knew how to appeal directly and forcibly to a 
human consciousness without putting the thing into 
words. Crane, who was extraordinarily sensitive, 
understood instantly that the manager wished to 
excuse Mortimer on the grounds of his condition, 
and that he put it up to the younger man to 
drop the issue. Wherefore, Crane nodded quietly 
and stepped back without a word. 


THE “TAG” 


41 


It is proverbial that red hair goes with a peppery 
disposition. Norman Crane’s short, crispy waving 
locks were not precisely red, and his temper was 
not too savage, but there was a generous touch 
of fire in both. His hair was a ruddy auburn, 
and there was in his personality a warmth and 
glow which could be genial or fierce, according 
to provocation or occasion. He was a lovable lad, 
young even for his twenty-three years, with a clean 
ardor about him that was very attractive, especially 
to older and more sophisticated persons. Norman 
Crane was in all ways a fine fellow, as fine for 
a man as Sybil Merivale was for a woman. They 
were the same age, buoyant, clear-eyed young 
people, touched both alike with the spark of pure 
passion and the distinction of honest bravery. 

Dukane was too truly artistic not to appreciate 
sentiment; in his business he had both to appraise 
and exploit it. And as he saw the two standing 
together he experienced a distinct sensation of pleas¬ 
ure. They were so obviously made for each other, 
and were both such splendid specimens of youth, 
spirit, and wholesome charm. He determined men¬ 
tally to cast them opposite each other some day, 
for they made a delightful picture. Not yet; but 
in a few years- 

The managerial calculations came to an abrupt 
end as he chanced to catch sight of Alan Mortimer’s 
face. 

Intense emotion is not generally to be despised 



42 


THE SEVENTH SHOT 


by a manager when he beholds it mirrored in an 
actor’s face, but this passion was a bit too naked 
and brutal, and it was decidedly out of place at a 
rehearsal. The man could be charming when he 
liked, but to-day the strings of his self-restraint 
were unkeyed. His face had become loose in line; 
his eyes smoldered beneath lowered lids. Dukane 
saw clearly revealed in that look what he had 
already begun to suspect—a sudden, fierce passion 
for Sybil Merivale. 

This sort of thing was nothing new for Mortimer. 
He was a man who attracted many types of women 
—some of them inexplicably, as it seemed to male 
onlookers—and whose loves were as fiery and as 
fleeting as falling stars. He had made love both to 
Kitty Legaye and Grace Templeton, playing them 
against each other not so much with skill as with 
a cavalier and amused mercilessness which might 
well have passed for skill. Now he was tired of 
the game, and, in a temporarily demoralized con¬ 
dition, was as so much tinder awaiting a new 
match. 

Then the youth and freshness of the girl un¬ 
questionably attracted him. Alan Mortimer was in 
his late thirties and had lived hard and fast. Like 
most men of his kind, he was willing enough to 
dally by the wayside with the more sophisticated 
women; but it was youth that pulled him hardest— 
girlhood, imspoiled and delicate. Dukane, more than 
a bit of a philosopher, speculated for a passing 


THE “TAG” 


43 


minute as to whether it was the inextinguishable 
urge toward purity and decency even in a rotten 
temperament, or merely the brutish wish that that 
which he intended to corrupt should be as nearly 
incorruptible as possible. 

But the manager permitted himself little medita¬ 
tion on the subject. He had no wish that others 
should surprise that expression upon the countenance 
of his new star. 

“Last act!” he called sharply. 

Willie Coster glanced at him in surprise. It 
was unusual for the “governor” to take an active 
hand in conducting rehearsals. 

“How about Miss Merivale?” he said. “Isn’t 
she to read Lucille?” 

“Here is the part.” Dukane took it from his 
pocket and dropped it on the prompt table. “Miss 
Templeton—er—turned it in this noon.” He sup¬ 
pressed a smile as he recalled the vigor with 
which Grace Templeton had thrown the little blue- 
bound booklet at him across his desk. He added: 
“Let Miss Merivale take the complete script home 
with her to-night; that will give her the best idea 
of the character.” For Dukane, unlike most of 
his trade, believed in letting his people use as 
much brain as God had given them in studying 
their roles. 

“Then we start at the beginning of Act Four,” 
said Coster. “Here’s the part. Miss Merivale. Just 


44 


THE SEVENTH SHOT 


read it through for this rehearsal, and get a line 
on the business and where you stand. Everybody, 
please! Miss Merivale, you’re not on till Mr. 
Mortimer’s line, ‘The girl I would give my life for.’ 
Then you enter up stage, right. Ready, Mr. 
Mortimer?” 

The company breathed one deep, unanimous sigh 
of relief. They had feared that the advent of a 
new Lucille would mean going back and doing 
the whole morning’s work over again. But Dukane 
was—yes, he really was almost human—for a 
manager! 

There were three other persons who had seen 
Mortimer’s self-betraying look as his eyes rested 
on Sybil Merivale’s eager young beauty. One was 
Norman Crane, one was Kitty Legaye, and one 
was the detective, Jim Barrison. 

Barrison’s eyes met those of Dukane for a mo¬ 
ment, and he had a shrewd idea that the manager 
was telegraphing him a sort of message. He re¬ 
solved to hang around as long as he could and 
get a word alone with Dukane after rehearsal 
was over. 

At this point John Carlton, the author, arrived. 
He was a dark, haggard young man, but, though 
looking thoroughly subdued after a fortnight under 
the managerial blue pencil, he quite brightened 
up on being introduced to Barrison. 

“Thankful, no end,” he muttered in a hasty 


THE “TAG” 


aside. “Was afraid they’d cut out the whole 
finger-print business.” 

“Cut it! Why? No good?” 

“Too good!” sighed the discouraged playright. 
He had, however, hauled a lagging sense of humor 
out of the ordeal, for shortly after, he went with 
Barrison to sit in a box in the dark auditorium, 
and evolved epigrams of cynic derision as he 
watched the rehearsal of his play. Barrison found 
him not half a had fellow, and before the hot 
afternoon wore itself out, they had grown quite 
friendly. 

Barrison’s own part in the rehearsal was soon 
disposed of. After he had explained the way the 
police detect finger prints upon objects that seem 
innocent of the smallest impression, and illustrated 
on a page of paper, a tumbler, and the surface 
of the table, his work was over for the day. 
Mortimer promised to practice a bit, that the effect 
might be quite technical and expert-looking. Bar¬ 
rison was to come to another rehearsal in a few 
days and see how it looked. Then the detective 
found himself free to enjoy the rest of the re¬ 
hearsal, such as it was. 

“Which won’t be much,” Carlton warned him. 
“This is just a running over of lines for the 
company, and to start Miss Merivale off. Nobody 
will do any acting.” 

“The last act ought to be the most important, 
I should think,” said Barrison. 


46 


THE SEVENTH SHOT 


“Oh, well, so far as action and hullabaloo goes— 
shots and soldiers and that sort of thing. But 
it’s a one-man play, anyway, and I’ve had to make 
that last act a regular monologue. It’s all Mor¬ 
timer. He’s Al, too, when he cares to take the 
trouble. Drunk now, of course, but he’s no fool. 
He’ll keep sober for the opening, and if the women 
don’t go dippy over his looks and his voice and 
his love-making, I miss my guess. Now, watch— 
this is going to be one of the exciting scenes in 
the play, so far as action goes. Pure melodrama, 
hut the real thing, if I say it as shouldn’t—girl 
in the power of a gang of ruffians, spies and so 
forth. Night—dark scene, you know—a really 
dark scene, with all the lights out, front and 
back. Pitch black. Just a bit of a wait to get 
people jumpy, and then the shots.” 

Willie Coster cried out: “Hold the suspense, 
folks! No one move. Lights are out now.” He 
waited while ten could be counted; then deliberately 
began to strike the table with his fist. “One— 
two-” 

“Those are supposed to be shots,” explained 
Carlton. 

“Three—four—five—six-” 

“That’s enough!” interposed Dukane. “The women 
don’t like shooting, anyway.” 

“All right. Six shots, Mortimer. Now you’re 
coming on, carrying Lucille —^never mind the busi¬ 
ness. Miss Merivale, read your line: ‘Thank God, 




THE “TAG” 


47 


it’s you—in time!’ Right! All the rest of you— 
hurry up! You’re carrying torches, you hoobs; 
don’t you know by this time what you do during 
the rescue? Oh; for the love of-” 

He began to tell the company what he thought 
of it collectively and individually, and Carlton 
turned to Barrison. 

“All over hut the shouting—and the love scene. 
Mortimer can do that in great form, but you’ll 
get no idea of it to-day, of course. He isn’t 
even trying.” 

“He’s a good bit soberer than he was, though,” 
said Barrison, who was watching the star carefully. 

“Well, I’m inclined to think he is. Maybe he’ll 
wake up and do his tricks, but you never can 
tell with him. There go the extras off; it’s the 
love scene now.” 

The last scene in the play was a short, senti¬ 
mental dialogue between Tarrant^ the hero, and 
Lucille, Sybil read her lines from the part; Mor¬ 
timer knew his, but recited them without interest 
or expression, giving her her cues almost me¬ 
chanically, though his eyes never left her face, 
and as they played on toward the “curtain,” he 
began to move nearer to her. 

“A little more down front, Lucille** said Coster 
from the prompt table. ^'Tarrant is watching you, 
and we want his full face. All right; that’s it. 
Go on, Tarrant -” 

“ ‘What do you suppose all this counts for 




48 


THE SEVENTH SHOT 


with me,’ ” said Mortimer, speaking slowly and 
with more feeling than he had used that afternoon. 
“ ‘What does it all amount to, if I have not tlie 
greatest reward of all— Lucille?' ” 

Barrison, listening to the sudden passion vi¬ 
brating in the genuinely splendid voice, thought 
he could begin to understand something of the 
man’s magnetism. If he really tried, he could 
make a tremendous effect. 

“ ‘But the honors that have been heaped upon 
you!’ ” read Sybil, her eyes bent earnestly upon the 
page before her. “ ‘Your success, your achieve¬ 
ments, your-She stopped. 

“Catch her up quicker, Mortimer!” exclaimed 
Coster. “We don’t want a wait here, for Heaven’s 
sake! Speak on ‘your success, your’—speak on 
‘your.’ Now, once more. Miss Merivale!” 

“ ‘Your success,’ ” read Sybil again, “ ‘your 

achievements, your-” 

“ ‘Honors! Success! Achievements!’ ” Mortimer’s 
tone was ringing and heartfelt. “‘What do they 
mean to me, Lucille —without you? They are so 
many empty cups; only you can fill them with the 

wine of life and love-’ ” 

“Noah’s-ark stuff,” murmured Carlton. “Likewise 
Third Avenue melodrama. But it’ll all go if he 
does it like that!” 

“ ‘Lucille—speak to me-” 

‘“You are one who has much to be thankful 



THE “TAG” 49 

for, much to be proud of! Your medal of honor— 
surely that means something to you?’” 

“ ‘Ah, yes I I am proud of it—the gift of my 
country! But it is given to the soldier. The man 
still waits for his prize! There is only one decora¬ 
tion which I want in all this life, Lucille, only 
one-” 

**And so forth—all right!” said Willie, closing 
the manuscript; for the final line of the play, the 
“tag,” as it is called, is never given at rehearsals. 

But Mortimer appeared to have forgotten this 
ancient superstition of the theater—seemed, indeed, 
to have forgotten everything and everybody save 
Sybil and the opportunity given him by the situa¬ 
tion. 

He caught the girl in his arms and delivered 
the closing line in a voice that was broken with 
passion: 

“ ‘The decoration that I want is your love, 
Lucille —^your kiss 1’ ” 

And he pressed his lips upon hers. 

Sybil wrenched herself free, flaming with in¬ 
dignation. Crane, very white, started forward. Mor¬ 
timer, white also, but with a very slight, very 
insolent smile, wheeled to meet him. But Dukane, 
moving with incredible swiftness, stood between 
them. His face was rather stern, but his voice 
was as level and equable as ever as he said 
quietly: 

“All right, all right—it is the business of the 


50 


THE SEVENTH SHOT 


piece. But just a bit premature, Mortimer, don’t 
you think? Suppose we let Miss Merivale get 
her lines first? There will be plenty of time to 
work up the action later. Rehearsal dismissed, 
Willie. Have every one here at nine sharp to¬ 
morrow. What’s the matter with you?*' 

For Willie Coster was sitting, pale and furious, 
by the prompt table, swearing imder his breath 
with a lurid eloquence which would have astonished 
any one who did not know him of old. 

“Damn him!” he ended up, after he had ex¬ 
hausted his more picturesque and spectacular vo¬ 
cabulary. “He’s said the tag, gov’nor—^he’s spoken 
the tag—and queered our show!” 

“Oh, rot, Willie!” said Dukane impatiently. 
“You’re too old a bird to believe in fairy tales 
of that sort!” 

But Willie shook his sandy, half-bald head and 
swore a little more, though more sorrowfully now. 

“You mark my words, there’ll never be any luck 
for this show,” he declared solemnly. “Never any 
luck! And when we open, gov’nor, you just re¬ 
member what I said to-day!” 


CHAPTER IV 


THE LETTER OF WARNING 

B ut isn’t it very early to stop rehearsal?” asked 
Barrison of John Carlton. 

“Of course it is. They ought to have gone over 
the whole act again, and lots of the scenes several 
times. That rescue stuff was rotten! But it’s an 
off day. Something’s wrong; I’m not sure what, 
though I think I know. Oh, well, it’s all in the 
day’s work. Wait till you’ve seen as many of 
your plays produced as I have!” 

“It’s as mysterious to me as one of the lost arts 
of Egypt. I couldn’t think out a scene to save 
my neck.” 

“And yet,” said John Carlton reflectively, “a 
detective gets an immense amount of raw dramatic 
material in his business. He must. Now, right 
here in our own little happy family circle”—^he 
waved an arm toward the stage—“there’s drama to 
hum! Can’t you see it—or are you fellows trained 
only to detect crime?” 

“How do you mean—drama?” queried Barrison, 
seeking safety in vagueness. 

“Well,” said Carlton, reaching for his hat and 
stick, “it strikes me that your well-beloved and 
highly valuable central planet draws drama as 


52 


THE SEVENTH SHOT 


molasses draws flies. Pardon the homely simile, 
but, like most geniuses, I was reared in Indiana.” 

“He’s a queer sort of chap,” said Jim, looking 
at the tall actor as he stood talking to Dukane, 
his heavy, handsome profile clearly outlined against 
an electric light. 

“Queer? He’s a first-class mystery. ‘He came 
like water, and like wind he goes’—though I hope 
he’ll prove a bit more stable as a dramatic invest¬ 
ment. Seriously, no one knows anything about him. 
He’s Western, I believe, and I suppose Dukane 
fell over him some dark night when he was out 
prospecting for obscure and undiscovered genius.” 

“He’s good looking.” 

“My son,” said Carlton, whose familiarity and 
colloquialism were in striking contrast to the grand¬ 
iloquent lines he gave his characters to speak, “wait 
till you see him in khaki, with the foots half up 
and a little incidental music on the violins going on! 
Manly beauty is not a hobby of mine, but I’ve had 
experience with matinee idols, and I bet that Mor¬ 
timer is there with the goods. What are you 
laughing at?” 

“The difference between your stage dialogue and 
your ordinary conversation.” 

“Oh, well, I can’t help talking slang, and I 
don’t know how to write it so that it sounds like 
anything but the talk of a tough bunch in a corner 
joint.” He stopped abruptly at the entrance to 
the box and said, as though acting on impulse: 


THE LETTER OF WARNING 53 

“See here, speaking of Mortimer, did you ever see 
a three-ring circus?” 

“Yes. I always found it very confusing.” 

“Me, too. Mortimer doesn’t. He likes it. Takes 
three at least to make him feel homelike and jolly. 
He’s been—between ourselves—the temperamental 
lover with Grace Templeton, and the prospective 
fiance with Miss Legaye; at least, that’s how I 

dope it out; and now it looks as though he was 
going to be the bold, had kidnaper with this 

charming child just arrived in our midst. What do 
you think, from what you’ve seen to-day?” 

“He hasn’t been himself to-day,” answered Bar- 
rison. “And, anyhow, there can’t be a three-ring 
circus with one of the three features absent. Miss 
Templeton, I understand, is not to be counted any 
longer.” 

He spoke with rather forced lightness. He 

disliked bringing women into conversation. He 
did Carlton the justice, however, to see that it was 
not a vulgar predilection for gossip which cen¬ 

tralized his interest in the three who had received 
Mortimer’s attention. Obviously he looked upon 
them as coldbloodedly as did Dukane; they were 
part of his stock in trade, his “shop.” 

“Not to be counted any longer! Isn’t she just? 
If you’d ever seen the lady you’d know that you 
couldn’t lose her just by dismissing her.” 

Barrison had seen her, but he said nothing. 

“However,” went on the author, leading the way 


54 


THE SEVENTH SHOT 


out of the box and through the communicating 
door between the front and back of the house, 
“it’s none of my business—though I’ll admit it 
entertains me, intrigues me, if you like. I can 
talk something besides slang. I’m nothing but a 
poor rat of an author, but if I were a grand and 
glorious detective with an idle hour or so to put 
in. I’d watch that combination. I’m too poor and 
too honest to afford hunches, as a rule, but I’ve 
got one now, and it’s to the effect that there’ll 
be more melodramd behind the scenes in ‘Boots 
and Saddles’ than there ever will be in the show 
itself!” 

Though Barrison said nothing in reply, he pri¬ 
vately agreed with the playwright. Nothing very 
startling had happened, to be sure, yet he was 
acutely conscious of something threatening or at 
least electric in the air—a tension made up of a 
dozen small trifles which might or might not be 
important. It would be difficult to analyze the 
impression made upon him, but he would have 
had to be much less susceptible to atmosphere than 
he was not to have felt that the actors in this new 
production were playing parts other than those 
given them by Carlton, and that they stood in 
rather singular and interesting relation to each 
other. 

Mortimer infatuated with Sybil Merivale; Kitty 
Legaye, he strongly suspected, in love with Mor¬ 
timer; Crane wildly and youthfully jealous; Miss 


THE LETTER OF WARNING 


55 


Templeton in the dangerous mood of a woman 
scorned and an actress supplanted! It looked like 
the makings of a very neat little drama, as John 
Carlton had had the wit to see. 

Barrison, however, was still inclined to look upon 
the whole affair as something of a farce; it was 
diverting, but not absorbing. There was nothing 
about it, as yet, to quicken his professional interest. 
He did, to be sure, recall Grace Templeton’s wicked 
look in the restaurant, and had a passing doubt 
as to what she was likely to do next; but he 
brushed it away lightly enough, reminding himself 
that players were emotional creatures and that they 
probably took it out in intensity of temperament— 
and temper! They were not nearly so likely ac¬ 
tually to commit any desperate deeds as those who 
outwardly or habitually were more calm and con¬ 
servative. 

But something happened at the stage door which 
disturbed this viewpoint. 

When they crossed the stage the company was 
scattering right and left. Miss Legaye was just de¬ 
parting, looking manifestly out of sorts; Sybil and 
young Crane were talking together with radiant 
faces and evident oblivion of their whereabouts; 
Mortimer was nowhere to be seen. Carlton had 
stopped to speak to Willie Coster, so Barrison made 
his way out alone. 

He found Dukane standing by the “cage” oc- 


56 THE SEVENTH SHOT 

cupied by the doorkeeper, with an envelope in his 
hand. 

“When did this come, Roberts?” he said. 

“About twenty minutes ago, sir. You told me 
not to interrupt rehearsals, and the boy said 
there was no answer.” 

“A messenger boy?” 

“No, sir—just a ragamuffin. Looked like he 
might be a newsboy, sir.” 

Dukane stood looking at the envelope a moment 
in silence; then he turned to Barrison with a 
smile. 

“Funny thing, psychology!” he said. “I haven’t 
a reason on earth for supposing this to be any 
more important than any of the rest of Alan Mor¬ 
timer’s notes-—the saints know he gets enough of 
them!—and yet I have a feeling in my bones that 
there’s something quite unpleasant inside this en¬ 
velope. Here, Mortimer, a note for you.” 

The actor came around the corner from a corridor 
leading past a row of dressing rooms, and they 
could see him thrust something into his coat pocket. 

“Went to his dressing room for a drink,” said 
Barrison to himself. Indeed, he thought he could 
see the silver top of a protruding flask. 

“Note for me? Let’s have it.” 

He took it, stared at the superscription with a 
growing frown, and then crumpled it up without 
opening it. 


THE LETTER OF WARNING 


57 


“Wrenn!” he exclaimed in a tone of ungoverned 
rage. “Where’s Wrenn? Did he bring me this?” 

“Wrenn?” repeated Dukane, surprised. “You 
mean your valet? Why, no; he isn’t here. A boy 
brought it. Why don’t you read it? You don’t 
seem to like the handwriting.” 

With a muttered oath, the actor tore open the 
envelope and read what was written on the inclosed 
sheet of paper. Then, with a face convulsed and 
distorted with fury, he flung it from him as he 
might have flung a scorpion that had tried to bite 
him. 

“Threats!” he exclaimed savagely. “Threats! 
May Heaven curse any one who threatens me! 
Threats!” 

He seemed incapable of further articulation, 
and strode past them out of the stage door. Bar- 
rison could see that he was the type of man who 
can become literally blind and dazed with anger. 
Mentally the detective decided that such uncon¬ 
trolled and elemental temperaments belonged prop¬ 
erly behind bars; certainly they had no place in a 
world of convention and self-restraint. 

Quietly Dukane picked up both letter and en¬ 
velope, and, after reading what was written on 
them, passed them to Barrison. 

“When I have a lunatic to dry nurse,” he ob¬ 
served grimly, “I have no scruples in examining 
the stuff that is put in his feeding bottles. Take 


58 


THE SEVENTH SHOT 


a look at this communication, Barrison. Fll admit 
Fm glad that I don’t get such things myself.” 

Jim glanced down the page of letter paper. On 
it, in scrawling handwriting, was written: 

You cannot always escape the consequences of your 
wickedness and cruelty—don’t think it! Just now your 
future looks bright and successful, but you cannot be sure. 
You are about to open in a new play, and you expect to 
win fame and riches. But God does not forget, though He 
seems to. God does punish people, even at the last mo¬ 
ment. I should think you would be afraid that lightning 
would strike the theater, or that a worse fate would over¬ 
take you. Remember, Alan, the wages of sin; remember 
what they are. Who are you to hope to escape? I bid 
you farewell, until the opening night! 

The last four words were heavily underlined. 
There was no signature. 

“What do you make of it?” asked Dukane. 

“It’s from a woman, of course. Quite an ordinary 
threatening letter. We handle hundreds of them, 
and most of them come to nothing at all.” 

“Possibly,” said Dukane thoughtfully. “And yet 
I don’t feel like ignoring it entirely. Not on 
Mortimer’s own account, you understand. He’s 
not the type of fellow I admire, and I don’t doubt 
he richly deserves any punishment that may be in 
store for him. But he’s my star, and if anything 
happens to him I stand to lose more money than I 
feel like affording in these hard times.” 


THE LETTER OF WARNING 59 

can have a couple of men detailed to keep 
an eye on him,” suggested Rarrison. 

Dukane shook his head. “He’d find it out and 
be furious,” he returned. “Whatever else he is, 
he’s no coward, and he detests having his personal 
affairs interfered with. Hello! What is it you 
want?” 

The thin, gaunt, white-haired man whom he 
addressed was standing, hat in hand, in the alley 
just outside the stage door, and he was evidently 
waiting to speak to the manager. 

“If you please, sir,” he began, half apologetically, 

“Mr. Mortimer told me to-” 

“You’re Mortimer’s man, aren’t you?” 

“Yes, sir; I’m Wrenn. I came down in the car 
for Mr. Mortimer, sir. He—he seemed a bit upset¬ 
like this morning.’^ His faded old eyes looked ap¬ 
pealingly at the manager. 

“He did,” assented that gentleman dryly. “You 
take very good care of Mr. Mortimer, Wrenn,” he 
added, in a kinder tone. “I’ve often noticed it.” 

“Thank you, sir. I try- 

“He sent you back for something?” 

“Yes, sir.” The old servant was clearly anxious 
and ill at ease, and the answer came falteringly: 

“A—a letter, sir, that he forgot- 

Rarrison had already thrust that letter into his 
own pocket. He knew that Dukane would prefer 
him not to produce it. As a specimen of hand- 





60 


THE SEVENTH SHOT 


writing it was worth keeping, in case of possible 
emergencies in the future. 

Dukane affected to hunt about on the floor. 

“Here is the envelope,” he said, giving it to the 
valet. ‘T don’t see any letter. Mr. Mortimer must 
have put it in his pocket; indeed, I think I saw 
him do so. He seemed a good deal excited, and 
probably doesn’t remember.” 

“Yes, sir, but-” Wrenn still hesitated. 

“That’s all. Go back to your master and say the 
letter is nowhere to be found. Tell him I said so.” 

“Yes, sir.” 

Unwillingly Wrenn walked away. 

“A decent old chap,” commented Dukane, look¬ 
ing after him. “I can’t understand why he sticks 
to that ill-tempered rake, but he seems devoted to 
him.” 

They went out together, and saw Wrenn say 
something at the window of the great purring 
limousine that was waiting in the street at the 
end of the court. After a minute he got in, and 
the car moved off immediately. 

“No,” said the manager, as though there had 
been no interruption to his talk with Barrison, “I 
hardly think that we’d better have him shadowed, 
even for his own protection. I think that the 
writer of that note means to save her—er—sensa¬ 
tional effect for the first night, don’t you?” 

“Well,” admitted the detective, “it would be like 
a revengeful woman to wait until a spectacular oc- 



THE LETTER OF WARNING 


61 


casion of that sort if she meant to start something. 
Particularly”—he spoke more slowly—“if she hap¬ 
pened to be a theatrical woman herself.” 

“Ah, yes,” said Dukane calmly. “Especially if 
she happened to be a theatrical woman herself.” 

He was silent for a long minute as they walked 
toward Broadway. Then, as he stopped to light a 
cigar, he said: 

“Every woman is a theatrical woman in that 
sense. My dear fellow, women are the real dra¬ 
matists of this world. If a man wants to do a 
thing—rob a bank, or elope with his friend’s wife, 
or commit a murder, or anything like that—^he goes 
ahead and does it as expeditiously and as incon¬ 
spicuously as possible. But a woman invariably 
wants to set the stage. A woman must have in¬ 
vented rope ladders, suicide pacts, poisoned wine 
cups, and the farewell letter to the husband. Next 
to staging a love scene, a woman loves to stage a 
death scene—^whether it’s murder, suicide, tuber¬ 
culosis, or a broken heart. Would any man in 
Mimics situation have let himself be dragged hack 
to die in the arms of his lost love? Hardly! He’d 
crawl into a hole or go to a hospital.” 

“It was a man who wrote the story of Mimi” Bar- 
rison reminded him. 

“A man who, being French, knew all about 
women. Yes, I think we can safely leave our pre¬ 
cautions imtil September the fifteenth. Just the 
same, Barrison, I shall be just as well pleased if 


62 


THE SEVENTH SHOT 


youTl manage to drop in at rehearsals fairly often 
during the next fortnight. There might be develop¬ 
ments. ril leave word with Roberts in the morning 
that you are to come in when you like.” 

Barrison promised, and left him at the comer of 
Broadway. 

As he walked back to his own rooms, Dukane’s 
words lingered in his memory: 

“Women are the real dramatists of this world!” 

He thought of the same phrase that evening when, 
while he was in the middle of his after-dinner 
brandy and cigar, his Japanese servant announced: 

“A lady on business. Very important.” 

Barrison started up, hardly able to believe his 
eyes. The woman who stood at his door was Miss 
Templeton 1 


CHAPTER V. 


MISS TEMPLETON 

OHE was in full evening dress, with her splendid 
^ shoulders and arms bare, and her brilliant hair 
uncovered and elaborately dressed. Her tightly 
clinging gown was black, embroidered in an orchid 
design of rose color and gold. A long black lace 
scarf, thrown over one arm, was her only apology 
for a wrap. She was just then, as Barrison was 
obliged to confess to himself, one of the handsomest 
women he had ever seen in his life. He realized 
now that she was younger than he had thought. 

Also she looked far less artificial and flamboyant 
than she had looked at luncheon. Jim’s orange- 
shaded reading lamp was kinder to her than that 
intrusively glaring sunbeam had been. There was 
even a softness and a dignity about her, he thought. 
Perhaps, though, it was merely a pose, put on for 
the occasion as she had put on her dinner dress. 

Moving slowly and with a very real grace, she 
came a few steps into the room and inclined her 
handsome head very slightly. 

“Mr. Barrison?” 

He bowed and drew a high-backed, brocaded 
chair into a more inviting position. “Won’t you sit 
down?” 


64 


THE SEVENTH SHOT 


“Thank you. I am Grace Templeton.” 

“I know,” he said, smiling courteously. “I feel 
enormously honored.” 

“Ah, yes. You saw me at lunch to-day.” 

“I have seen you before.” 

“Really!” Her eyes lit up with genuine pleasure. 
She was inordinately vain of her stage reputation. 
She thrilled to the admiration of her anonymous 
audiences. Jim, looking at her, marveled at that 
imperishable thirst for adulation which, gratified, 
could bring a woman joy at such a moment. For 
he felt sure that it was no ordinary crisis which 
had brought Miss Templeton to consult him that 
night. 

She sank into the chair he proffered, and the 
high, square back made a fine frame for the gilded 
perfection of her hair. He thought, quite coolly, 
that no one ever had a whiter throat or more ex¬ 
quisitely formed arms and wrists. Her manner was 
admirable; not a trace now of that primitive and 
untamed ferocity of mood which had blazed in her 
whole face and figure not so many hours before. 

She was very beautiful, very sedate, very self- 
contained. Barrison was able to admire her frankly 
—but never for a second did he lift the vigilance of 
the watch he had determined to keep upon her. In 
his own mind he marked her “dangerous”—and not 
the less so because just at present she was behaving 
so extremely, so unbelievably well. 

“You are surprised to see me here, Mr. Barrison,” 


MISS TEMPLETON 65 

she said, making it a statement rather than a 
question. 

“I confess that I am.” 

‘T wanted your help, and—^when I want a thing I 
ask for it.” 

She paused a moment, looking at him steadily. 
“Won’t you please sit down yourself?” she said. 
“And move your lamp. I like to see the face of the 
person I am talking to.” 

Barrison did what she wished silently. In half a 
minute more they confronted each other across the 
library table, with the reading light set somewhat 
aside. Miss Templeton drew a deep breath and 
leaned forward with her lovely arms upon the 
table. 

“When I heard that you were to be called in as 
an expert to help in—our—play”—she paused, with 
a faint smile that was rather touching—“you see, 
it was ‘our play’ then—I made up my mind to con¬ 
sult you. For I was troubled even then. But the 

best laid schemes-” She broke otf, with a little 

gesture that somehow made her look younger. “Oh, 
well—I found myself, in an hour, in a minute, in a 
position I was not used to: I was dismissed!” She 
made him feel the outrageousness of this. 

“My mind was naturally disturbed,” she went on. 
“It is a shocking thing, Mr. Barrison, to find your¬ 
self cast adrift when you have been counting on a 
thing, believing in it-” 

“I should scarcely have thought that it would be 




66 


THE SEVENTH SHOT 


so awful,” Jim ventured, “for you, who surely need 
not remain in such a predicament any longer than 
you care to.” 

She flashed him a grateful glance. “That is nice 
of you. But I truly think that it is worse in a case 
like mine. One grows accustomed to things. It is 
somewhat appalling to find oneself without them, 
to find them snatched away before one’s eyes. You 
see, I have never been ‘fired’ before.” She uttered 
the last words with a surprisingly nice laugh. “It 
was rather terrible, truly. I asked Alan Mortimer 
to-day who you were,” she said quietly. “When I 
knew, I determined that I would come to see you.” 

“And so-” he suggested encouragingly. 

She was, if this were cleverness, much too clever 
to change her gentle, rather grave attitude. “And 
so,” she said, as she leaned upon the table, “I have 
come to speak to you of the things which a woman 
does not speak of as a rule.” 

Jim Barrison was slightly alarmed. “But why 
come to me?” he protested, though not too discour¬ 
teously. “We are strangers, and—surely you do 
not need a detective in your trouble, whatever it is?” 

“Why not?” she demanded swiftly. “In your 
career, Mr. Barrison, have you never found yourself 
close to the big issues of life, the deep and tragic 
things? Does not the detective’s profession show 
him the most emotional and terrible and human con¬ 
ditions in all the world? It is as a detective that I 
want you to help me, Mr. Barrison.” 



MISS TEMPLETON 


67 


‘T—I shall be only too glad,” stammered Barri- 
son, with a full-grown premonition of trouble. He 
wished the woman had been less subtle; he had no 
mind to have his sympathies involved. 

She seemed to guess at something of his worry, 
for she lifted her black-fringed eyes to his and 
laughed—^not gayly, but sadly. “It’s all said very 
quickly,” she told him. “Alan Mortimer used to be 
in love with me; he is not now.” 

Barrison found himself dumb. What on earth 
could a man say to a woman tmder such circum¬ 
stances? He was no ladies’ man, and such homely 
sympathy as he had sometimes had to proffer to 
women in distress seemed highly out of place here. 
Miss Templeton, in her beauty and her strangeness, 
struck him as belonging to a class in herself. Re¬ 
sourceful as he was, he had not the right word just 
then. She did not appear to miss it, though. She 
went on, almost at once, with the kind of mournful 
calmness which nearly always wins masculine ap¬ 
probation : 

“Understand, there was no question of marriage. 
I do not claim anything at all except that—he did 
care for me.” She put her hand to her throat as if 
she found it difficult to continue, and added proudly: 
“I am the sort of woman, Mr. Barrison, who de¬ 
mands nothing of a man—except love. I believed 
that he gave me that. There were other women; 
there was one woman especially. She wanted him 
to marry her. She did not love him, as I under- 


68 


THE SEVENTH SHOT 


stand love, but she did want to marry him. She 
had lived a selfish, restless life for a good many 
years—she is as old as I, though no one knows it— 
hut she had never settled down. She is the type that 
eventually settles down; I am not. She wants to be 
protected and supported; I don’t. She is a born 
parasite—what we call a grafter; I am not. Per¬ 
haps you can guess whom I mean.” 

“Perhaps I can,” conceded Barrison, remembering 
what Carlton had said about Kitty Legaye and Alan 
Mortimer. 

“Ah!” She smiled faintly. “Very well. Here am 
I, flung aside from my part—and from him. She 
is left in possession, so to speak. That is almost 
enough to send a woman’s small world into chaos, is 
is not? But there was something more left for me 
to endure. Another woman came into the little play 
that I thought was fully—^too fully—cast. I don’t 
mean Mr. Carlton’s play; I mean the one that goes 
on night and day as long as men and women have 
red blood in their veins and say what they feel 
instead of what is written in their parts! Another 
woman was engaged—or practically engaged—^to 
take my place.” 

“Yes, I know. Miss Merivale.” 

“Miss Merivale.” She repeated the name slowly 
and without heat. “She is fresh and young and 
charming. I do not hate her as I do the other, but 
I am more afraid of her. She is just what he 


MISS TEMPLETON 69 

cannot find in the rest of us. She will win him. 
Yes, I know quite well that she will win him.” 

“But I don’t think she wants to win him,” said 
Barrison, recollecting the scene in which the “tag” 
had been prematurely spoken. He had a mental pic¬ 
ture of Sybil, scarlet of cheek and indignant of 
eyes, shrinking from Mortimer’s kiss. 

But Miss Templeton looked at him almost scorn¬ 
fully. 

“He can make her want to,” she declared posi¬ 
tively. “Don’t contradict me, because I know!” 
Miss Templeton paused a moment and then con¬ 
tinued: “Mr. Barrison, do not detectives occasionally 
undertake the sort of work that necessitates their 
following a person and—reporting on what he does 
—^that sort of thing?” 

“Yes, Miss Templeton.” 

“And would you undertake work of that kind?” 
Her fine eyes pleaded eloquently. 

“No, Miss Templeton; I’m afraid not.” 

“But why not? You’ve said detectives do it.” 

“Plenty of them.” 

“Do you mind telling me, then, why not?” 

Jim hesitated; then he decided to be frank. “You 
see,” he said gently, “I don’t do this entirely as a 
means of livelihood.” 

“You mean you’re an amateur, not a pro¬ 
fessional?” 

“I am a professional. But, since I can pick and 
choose to a certain extent, I usually choose such 


70 THE SEVENTH SHOT 

cases as strike me as most useful and most inter¬ 
esting.” 

“And my case doesn’t strike you as either?” 

“I don’t see yet that you have a case, Miss Tem¬ 
pleton. I don’t see what there is for a detective 
to do.” 

“Then I’ll explain. I want you to follow— 
shadow, do you call it?—Mr. Mortimer every day 
and every night. I want to know what he does, 
whom he sees^, where he goes. I will pay—any¬ 
thing-” 

Barrison put up his hand to check her. “Yes, I 
know,” he said quietly. “I quite understood what 
you wanted me to do. But your determination, or 
whim, or whatever we may call it, does not con¬ 
stitute a case.” 

“I can make you see why. I can tell you the rea¬ 
sons-” 

“I’m afraid that I don’t want to hear them. Miss 
Templeton. I simply can’t do what you ask me to. 
I’m sorry. There are detectives who will; you’d 
better go to them. I don’t like cases of that sort, 
and I don’t take them. Again—I’m sorry. Try not 
to think me too rude and ungracious.” 

She sat with down-bent head, and he could not 
see her face. He felt unaccountably sorry, as he 
had told her he felt. He could not have felt more 
grieved if he had hurt some one who had trusted 
him. 



MISS TEMPLETON 71 

Suddenly she flung up her head, and there was 
another look on her face—a harder, older look. 

“All right,” she said, in a metallic tone, “you 
won’t help me. I’m sure I don’t know why I should 
help you. But—if you won’t shadow Alan Mortimer 
these next two weeks, you take a tip from me: 
Shadow Kitty Legaye.” 


CHAPTER VI 


THE DIVIDED DANGER 


S she swept to the door, her golden head held 



high, her black scarf floating from one round 
white arm, she encountered a newcomer, one Tony 


Clay. 


“Beg pardon!” he gasped, standing aside. 

He was a cherubic, round-faced cub detective 
whom Barrison liked and helped along when he 
could—a nice lad, though a bit callow as yet. 

Miss Templeton’s trailing scarf caught in a chair 
and Tony hastened to extricate it. Feeling pro¬ 
foundly but unreasonably reluctant, Barrison made 
the introductions: 

“Miss Templeton, may I present Mr. Clay? He 
will put you in a taxi—^won’t you, Tony?” 

“Rather!” breathed the patently enraptured 
Tony. 

“My car is waiting,” Miss Templeton said sweetly. 
“I shall be so glad if Mr. Clay will see me safely as 
far as that.” 

Five minutes later Tony Clay returned, with spar¬ 
kling eyes and a delirious flow of language: 

“I say, Jim, where did you—^liow did she happen 

to- Oh, gee! Some people have all the luck! 

Isn’t she a peach? Isn’t she a wonder? Isn’t she 
just the- 




THE DIVIDED DANGER 


73 


“Have a brandy and soda, Tony, and shut up,” 
said Barrison, rather wearily. He was feeling a bit 
let down, for Miss Templeton was not a restful per¬ 
son to talk to, nor yet to hear talk for any long 
period. 

But Tony raved on. “She reminds me,” he bab¬ 
bled happily, “of some glorious, golden lioness- 

“Fine for you!” murmured Barrison, burying him¬ 
self in a particularly potent drink. 

Long after Tony Clay had gone, Jim sat scowling 
at the cigarettes which he lighted from one another 
with scarcely an interval, and at the brandy and 
soda of which he consumed more than what he usu¬ 
ally considered a fair allowance. Both as a man 
and a detective he admired Miss Templeton. 

He wished he had seen her handwriting and 
could compare it with the note which he still kept 
put away in a locked cabinet where he cached his 
special treasures. He wondered if- 

But her suggestion as to Kitty Legaye, inspired 
by jealousy as it was, was not without value. On 
the face of it, it seemed far-fetched, or would have 
to a less seasoned experience; but Jim Barrison had 
forgotten what it was to feel surprise at anything. 
Stranger things—^much, much stranger things—had 
turned out to be quite ordinary and natural oc¬ 
currences. 

There are, as Barrison knew, many varieties of 
the female of the species; he had come up against 
a goodly number of them, and could guess what the 




74 


THE SEVENTH SHOT 


different sorts would do in given extremities. And 
he knew that in the whole wild lot there is none 
wilder, none more secret, none more relentless, none 
more unexpected and inexplicable, than she who has 
counted on snatching respectability and domesticity 
at the eleventh hour and been disappointed. If Kitty 
Legaye had really expected to marry Alan Mortimer, 
and if he was getting ready to throw her over for a 
perfectly new, strange young girl, then one need 
not be astonished at anything. 

Yet, little Miss Legaye seemed a steady bit of hu- 
manity, not emotional or hysterical in the least. 

“Oh, hang it all!” he muttered resentfully, as he 
turned out his light at least two hours later than 
was his habit. “I wish women had never learned 
to write—or to talk! It would simplify life 
greatly.” 

Then he fell asleep and dreamed queer dreams in 
which Grace Templeton, Kitty Legaye and Sybil 
Merivale chased each other round and round, quar¬ 
reling for possession of the anonymous note which 
for some reason the old man Wrenn was holding 
high above his head in the center of the group. As 
the three women chased each other in the dream, 
Jim grew dizzier and dizzier, and finally woke up 
abruptly, feeling breathless and bewildered, with 
Tara, the Jap, standing beside him. 

“Honorable sir did having extreme bad dreams!” 
explained Tara, with some severity of manner. 

Barrison answered meekly and lay down again to 


THE DIVIDED DANGER 75 

fall only half asleep this time and toss restlessly un¬ 
til morning. 

He kept his word to Dukane and attended re¬ 
hearsals with religious regularity, though what tech¬ 
nical use he had was exhausted after a few days. 
He found himself becoming more and more inter¬ 
ested in the play—or, rather, in the actors who were 
appearing in it. Their personalities became more 
and more vivid to him; their relations more and 
more complex. 

Not the least curious of the conditions which he 
began to note as he grew to feel more at home 
behind the scenes was the strange, almost psychic 
influence which Mortimer appeared to have over Sy¬ 
bil Merivale. Almost one might have believed that 
he hypnotized her; only there was nothing about him 
that suggested abnormal spiritual powers, and the 
girl herself Was neither morbid nor weak. 

Barrison, now at liberty to roam about “behind” 
as he willed, overheard Miss Merivale one day talk¬ 
ing to Claire McAllister, the extra woman. 

“Say, I heard him ordering you about to-day as 
if he had a mortgage on you,” said Claire, who was 
practical and pugnacious. “What do you let him 
play the grand mogul with you for?” 

“I don’t believe I can make you understand,” said 
Sybil, breathing quickly, “but I don’t seem able to 
disobey him. When he looks at me I—it some¬ 
times seems as if I couldn’t think quite straight.” 


76 


THE SEVENTH SHOT 


“D’you mean,” demanded Claire McAllister 
sharply, “that you’re in love with him?” 

Sybil flushed indignantly. “That’s just what I do 
not mean!” she exclaimed. “Can’t you see the dif¬ 
ference? I—I hate him, I tell you! It’s some¬ 
thing outside that, but—but it frightens me. Some¬ 
times it seems, when I meet his eyes, that I can’t 
move—^that he can make me do what he likes.” She 
shivered and hid her face in her hands. “It’s that 
which makes me so frightened,” she whispered in a 
broken way. 

The extra girl regarded her curiously, then 
hunched her shoulders in the way of extra girls 
when they wish to indicate a shrug of indifference. 

“Well,” she remarked cheerily, “when little Morty 
takes the last high fall, we’ll look round to see if 
there wasn’t a certain lady handy to give him the 
extra shove.” 

Sybil turned on her quickly. “What do you 
mean?” she cried. “What do you mean by that?” 

Miss McAllister stared in surprise. “Sa-ay!” she 
remonstrated. “I was just kiddin’! Say, you didn’t 
suppose I thought you were goin’ to murder the 
guy, did you?” 

Sybil was rather white. “Awfully silly of me!” 
she apologized. “Only—sometimes I’ve felt as 

though- And it sounded awful, coming from 

some one else like that.” 


“Sometimes felt—what?” 



THE DIVIDED DANGER 77 

“As though—I almost—could!” She turned 

abruptly and walked away. 

Barrison, standing leaning against a piece of 
scenery, felt a hand upon his arm. He looked 
around into the agitated face of Norman Crane. 

The boy had heard just what he himself had 
heard, and the effect thereof was written large upon 
his handsome, honest young countenance. 

“Think of her—think of Sybil up against that!” 
he whispered huskily. “And me able to do nothing! 
Oh, it’s too unspeakably rotten, that’s what it is! 
If I could just wring that bounder’s neck, and be 
done with it-” 

“Look here!” said Jim Barrison, losing his cast- 
iron, chain-held patience at last. “There are about 
a dozen people already who want to murder Alan 
Mortimer. I’m getting to want to myself! For the 
love of Heaven, give a poor detective a rest and 
don’t suggest any one else; I’m getting dizzy!” 

Norman stared at him and edged away. 

“Does that fellow drink?” he asked Carlton, a few 
minutes later. 

“I hope so,” said the author absently, rumpling 
his hair with one hand while he wrote on a scrap of 
copy paper. “Mortimer has waited until now to 
have the last scene lengthened. Maledictions upon 
him! May his next reincarnation be that of a hump¬ 
backed goat!” 

Crane left him still murmuring strange impreca¬ 
tions. 



78 


THE SEVENTH SHOT 


Barrison went home, divided between annoyance 
and amusement at the promiscuous hate Mortimer 
had aroused. He was unquestionably the most un¬ 
popular man he had ever heard of; yet he was some¬ 
times charming, as Barrison had already seen. Sev¬ 
eral times at rehearsal, when he deliberately had 
chosen to exert his power of magnetism, the detec¬ 
tive, critical observer as he was, could not fail to 
note how successful he was. His charm was some¬ 
thing radiant and irresistible, and he could project it 
at will, just as some women can. A singular and a 
dangerous man, Jim decided. Such individuals al¬ 
ways made trouble for themselves and for others. 
The theater was becoming rather electric in atmos¬ 
phere, and Barrison was glad to get home. But his 
troubles were not over yet—even for that day! 

Just as he was sitting down to dinner Tony Clay 
appeared, looking hot and unhappy. 

“Hello, Tony! Have you eaten?” 

Tony nodded in a most dispirited fashion. His 
friend watched him a moment, and then said 
kindly: 

“Go ahead; what’s the trouble?” 

The young fellow looked uncomfortable. “Noth¬ 
ing,” he began; “that is- Oh, hang it all! I 

can’t lie to you. I’m upset, Jim!” 

“No!” said Barrison, with a smile. 

“Jim,” Tony went on, rather desperately, “do you 
believe that there ever are occasions when it is per- 



THE DIVIDED DANGER 79 

missible to give a client away? To a colleague, I 
mean. Do you?” 

“You just bet your life I do!” said Jim em¬ 
phatically. He put down his knife and fork and 
eyed his young friend with kindling interest. “Go 
on, kid, and tell me all about it.” 

“Well”—poor Tony looked profoundly miserable 
—“you know—that is of course you don’t know— 
but—Miss Templeton engaged me to shadow Alan 
Mortimer.” 

“I knew that as soon as you did,” remarked Jim. 

Tony opened his round eyes till each of them 
made a complete 0. 

“The devil you did!” he ejaculated, somewhat 
chagrined. “Well, she did engage me, and I 
shadowed away to the best of my ability. But now 
—Jim, I’m up against something too big for me, 
and I’ve brought it to you.” 

He looked pale and shaken, and Barrison said 
good-humoredly: 

“Go to it, Tony. I’ll help you if I can.” 

“Jim!” Tony Clay faced him desperately. “I 
think you ought to know that Miss Templeton has 
it in for Mortimer-” 

“I do know it, lad.” 

“And that—she bought a revolver to-day at the 
pawnshop near Thirty-ninth Street. I saw her. 
I suppose she got a permit somehow. But I hope 
I’ll never again see any one look the way she did 
when she came out with the parcel!” 



CHAPTER VII 


THE DARK SCENE 

I T was a little after eight in the evening of Septem¬ 
ber the fifteenth—the opening night of “Boots and 
Saddles” at the Mirror Theater. 

Already the house was filling up. From his seat 
on the aisle half a dozen rows back, Jim Barrison 
saw that it was going to be a typical first-night audi¬ 
ence. As this was a comparatively early opening, 
there were a goodly number of theatrical people 
present, and practically every one in the social 
world who had already returned to town was to be 
seen. Max Dukane’s productions were justly cele¬ 
brated all over the country, and Carlton was a pop¬ 
ular playwright. Then there was much well-sim¬ 
ulated curiosity in regard to Alan Mortimer. Du¬ 
kane’s press agent had done his work admirably, and 
the mystery surrounding the handsome new light 
in the dramatic heavens had been so artistically ex¬ 
ploited as to pique the interest even of jaded 
theatergoers. 

It was an oppressively hot evening, though Sep¬ 
tember was so far advanced. All the electric fans 
in the world could not keep the theater , cool and 
airy. To Barrison the air was suffocating. The 
gayly dressed people crowded down into neat rows; 
the hurrying, perspiring ushers in overheavy livery; 


THE DARK SCENE 


81 


the big asbestos curtain that shut them all into a 
simmering inclosure—^these things in combination 
were strangely oppressive, even in a sense impris¬ 
oning. Moreover, he was not free from a half- 
sincere, half-humorous sense of apprehension. 
Hardly anything so definite, so full-fledged, or so 
grave; but undoubtedly a mental tension of sorts 
which would not readily conform to a perfunctory 
festal spirit. 

Dukane, for all his coolness and poise, had in¬ 
sisted on taking the warning letter seriously—at 
least to the extent of taking every conceivable pre¬ 
caution against danger, of arranging every possible 
protection for Mortimer. It was understood that, 
while Jim Barrison had his allotted seat in the front 
of the house, he would spend most of the evening 
back of the scenes. Tony Clay was also on duty. 
There was a husky young guard on the communicat¬ 
ing door which was back of the right-hand boxes 
and opened on the world behind. No one was to be 
allowed to pass through that door that night but 
Dukane, Barrison, and his assistant. Roberts, at the 
stage door, had been similarly cautioned to let no 
one enter the theater on any pretext whatsoever 
after the members of the company had come for the 
performance. 

Barrison thought Dukane’s precautions rather ex¬ 
aggerated. He did not really think personally that 
any peril threatened Alan Mortimer that night. 
Murderers did not, as a rule, send word in advance 


82 


THE SEVENTH SHOT 


what they mean to do. Still, such things had hap¬ 
pened in his experience, and it was no harm to make 
sure. As for Miss Templeton and the revolver— 
well, that looked a bit more serious. He had not 
told Dukane of Tony’s confidential information, but 
he raked the many-hued audience with his sharp 
gaze, trying to see if the erstwhile leading woman 
was present. So far there was no sign of her. He 
was even inclined to treat Tony’s fears as some¬ 
what hysterical. It will be recalled that Miss Tem¬ 
pleton had made rather a good impression upon the 
detective, who was only human, after all, and prone 
to err like other mortals. 

The truth was that the whole situation struck him 
as a little too melodramatic to be plausible. He was 
suffering from the disadvantages of being a bit too 
cool and superior in view, a bit too well-balanced, a 
bit too much the practical sleuth regarding theatrical 
heroics with a pleasantly skeptical eye. Neverthe¬ 
less, cavalierly as he was disposed to treat them, he 
thought that it was possible that these many con¬ 
cessions to a possible gravity of situation, a more 
or less apocryphal danger, did add to the feeling of 
oppression which held him. It really seemed hard 
to breathe, and it was difficult even for his trained 
judgment to determine just how much of the sensa¬ 
tion was physical and how much psychological. 

At all events it was a very close, sultry night. As 
people came in and took their seats there were con¬ 
stant comments on the weather. 


THE DARK SCENE 


83 


“Humidity—just humidity!” pompously declared 
a man next Jim, one of those most trying wiseacres 
who know everything. “You’ll see it will rain be¬ 
fore the evening is over.” 

“There’s not a breath stirring outside,” said the 
girl who was with him, fanning herself. “I wish 
we were sitting near an electric fan.” 

The asbestos drop had gone up, and the orchestra 
began to play music specially written for the piece. 
It drowned the chatter of the well-dressed, expect¬ 
ant crowd. But the overture was short, and the 
lights all over the house soon began to go down 
in the almost imperceptibly gradual fashion affected 
by Max Dukane in his hig productions. When the 
other instruments had dwindled to a mere mist of 
retreating sound, one high, silver-clear bugle played 
the regimental call, “Boots and Saddles,” as a cue 
for the rise of the curtain upon the first act. 

But Barrison was not looking at the stage. Before 
the last lights had gone out in the front of the house 
he had caught sight of a woman who had just en¬ 
tered the right-hand stage box. She stood for a 
moment looking out over the audience before she 
slipped out of her gorgeous gold-embroidered eve¬ 
ning cloak and took her seat. 

“Look!” exclaimed the girl to the pompous man 
—and, though she spoke in an undertone, it was 
an undertone pregnant with sharp interest, almost 
excitement. “Look! There’s Gracie Templeton, who 


84 


THE SEVENTH SHOT 


started rehearsing with this show and got fired. 
They say she had quite an affair with Mortimer.” 

“Not much distinction in that,” remarked the man. 
“He’s crazy about women.” 

“Not much distinction either way,” said the 
woman lightly and heartlessly. “Grace has played 
about with ever so many men. But she isn’t alto¬ 
gether a bad sort, you know, and this Mortimer man 
seems to have the power to make women care for 
him awfully.” 

“Do you know him?” demanded her escort jeal¬ 
ously. 

“Not I!” She laughed. “But seriously, Dicky, I 
shouldn’t think she’d want to come to-night and see 
him playing with another woman.” 

“Maybe she means to pull a Booth-and-Lincoln 
stunt,” suggested the pompous man. “She’s fixed 
just right for it if she does.” 

“Oh, don’t! It’s horrible just to think of! You’re 
so cold-blooded, Dicky! Hush! The play’s begin¬ 
ning. I do like military shows, don’t you?” 

Barrison did not wait to see the opening of the 
piece. He had seen it once at dress rehearsal, and, 
anyway, he had other fish to fry. He slid out of his 
seat swiftly and almost unnoticeably and made his 
way without waste of time up the aisle and around 
in discreetly tempered darkness to the stage box 
which held Miss Grace Templeton. 

As he passed between the box curtains and came 
np behind her, she did not hear him, and he stood 


THE BARK SCENE 


85 


still for a moment before making any move which 
would reveal his presence. In that moment he had 
noticed that she was dressed entirely in black, 
that melancholy rather than passion was the mood 
which held her, and that she was watching the 
stage less with eagerness than with a wistful, weary 
sort of attention. She leaned back in her chair, and 
her hands lay loosely folded in her lap. There was 
about her none of the tension, none of the excite¬ 
ment, either manifest or suppressed, that accom¬ 
panies a desperate resolve. 

Barrison felt the momentary chill of foreboding, 
which certainly had crept up his spine, pass into a 
warmer and more peaceful sentiment of pity. He 
slipped into a chair just behind her without her 
having detected him. This, too, was reassuring. 
People with guilt, even prospective guilt, upon their 
consciences were always alert to interruption and 
possible suspicion. She was looking fixedly at the 
stage where Mortimer was now making his first 
entrance. 

He was a splendid-looking creature behind the 
footlights. Barrison had been obliged to admit it 
at dress rehearsal; he admitted it once more un¬ 
reservedly now. Whatever there was in his com¬ 
position of coarseness or ugliness, of cruelty, un¬ 
scrupulousness, or violence, was somehow softened 
—no, softened was not quite the word, since his 
stage presence was consistently and notably virile; 
but certainly uplifted and tinged with glamour and 


86 


THE SEVENTH SHOT 


colorful charm. Every one else in the company 
paled and thinned before him. 

“A great performance, is it not?” 

Jim spoke the words very gently into her ear, and 
then waited for the inevitable start. Strangely 
enough, in spite of the suddenness of the remark, 
she barely stirred from the still pose she had 
adopted. Dreamily she answered him, though with¬ 
out pause: 

“There is no one like him.” 

Then all at once she seemed to wake, to grow 
alive again, and to realize that she was actually talk¬ 
ing to a real person and not to a visionary comr 
panion. She turned, with a startled face. 

“Mr. Barrison! I thought I was quite alone, and 
—what did I say, I wonder? I felt as though I 
were half asleep!” 

“You voiced my thoughts; Mortimer is in splendid 
form, isn’t he?” 

She nodded. “I never saw him to better ad¬ 
vantage,” she said, speaking slowly and evidently 
weighing each word. “Watch him now, Mr. Barri¬ 
son, in his scene with Lucille. So much restraint, 
yet so much feeling! Yes, a superb impersona¬ 
tion!” 

Barrison looked curiously at the woman who 
spoke with so much discrimination. Was she really 
capable of being impersonal, disinterested? Yes, he 
believed that she was. A certain glow of returning 
confidence swept his heart; it was surely not she 


THE DARK SCENE 


87 


whom he had to fear—if, indeed, there were any 
one. He made up his mind to take a look at what 
was taking place behind the scenes, and rose to his 
feet, resting his hand lightly, almost caressingly, 
on the back of Miss Templeton’s chair. 

“Good-by, until later,” he murmured. “I am go¬ 
ing back to pay my respects to Dukane.” 

And as he spoke, his fingers closed upon the 
beaded satin bag which she had hung upon the back 
of her chair. Something uncompromisingly hard 
met his sensitive and intelligent touch. Instantly he 
withdrew his hand as though it had met with 
fire. There was a pistol in that pretty reticule; so 
much he was sure of. 

A moment later he tapped lightly on the com¬ 
municating door, and, meeting the eyes of the suspi¬ 
cious young giant on guard there, and speedily 
satisfying him as to his reliability, passed through 
into the strange, bizarre world of scenery and 
grease paint and spotlights with which he had lately 
become so familiar. 

“Remember,” he said to the blue-capped lad with 
the six inches of muscle and the truculent tendency, 
who stood as sentinel at that most critical passage¬ 
way, “no one—no one. Lynch—is to go through this 
door to-night. Understand?” 

“Right, sir!” 

Barrison made his way through a labyrinth of 
sets to where Dukane, against all precedent, was 
standing watching the performance from the wings* 


88 


THE SEVENTH SHOT 


“You ought to he in front,” the detective told him 
reprovingly. 

“Indeed!” Dukane looked at him with tired scorn. 
Then he fished a paper out of his waistcoat pocket. 
“Read this. It came this afternoon.” 

The new letter of warning ran: 

No man can run more than a certain course. When you 
look with love at the woman who claims your attention 
to-night, do you not think what might happen if a ghost 
appeared at your feast? You have called me wild and 
visionary in the past. Will you call me that when this 
night is over? 

Having read it and noted that the writing was the 
same as the previous one, Jim asked: “Have you 
shown this to Mortimer?” 

“Am I an idiot?” demanded Dukane pertinently. 
“No, my prince of detectives, I have not. I have 
troubles enough without putting my star on the 
rampage. Just the same, I think it is as well to be 
prepared for anything and everything. What do you 
think?” 

Unwillingly Barrison told him that he was not 
entirely happy in his mind concerning Miss Temple¬ 
ton. He asked minutely as to where Mortimer was 
going to stand during various parts of the play, 
notably during the dark scene in the last act. That, 
to his mind, offered rather too tempting a field for 
uncontrolled temperaments. 

“Ah!” said Dukane once more, looking at him. 


THE DARK SCENE 


89 


“You have found out something, eh? Well, no mat¬ 
ter. Whether you suspect something or not, you are 
going to help, you are going to be on guard. Miss 
Templeton, now—do you think it would be a good 
thing for you to go and spend the evening with her 
in her box?” 

Barrison did not think quite that, but he con¬ 
sented to retire to Miss Templeton’s box for at least 
two acts. The which he did, feeling most nervous 
all the time, as though he ought to be somewhere 
else. Miss Templeton was most agreeable as a com¬ 
panion, and most calm. Once in a while his eyes 
would become glued to the beaded bag hanging on 
the hack of her chair. Just before the last act he 
fled, and sent Tony Clay to take his place on a pre¬ 
text. He did not think he could stand it any 
longer. 

Behind, he found a curious excitement prevailing. 
No one had been told anything or warned in any 
way, yet a subtle undercurrent of suspense was 
strongly to be felt. There is no stranger phenom¬ 
enon than this psychic transmission of emotion with¬ 
out speech. To-night, behind the scenes at the Mir¬ 
ror Theater, the whole company seemed waiting for 
something. 

Sybil Merivale seemed particularly nervous. 

“I can’t think what has got into me!” she said 
with rather a shaky little laugh. “I wasn’t nearlj^ 
so upset at the beginning of the play, and usually 


90 


THE SEVENTH SHOT 


one gets steadier toward the end of a first night. 
I’m doing all right, am I not?” 

“You’re splendid!” Kitty Legaye said cordially. 
“I’m proud of you! You have no change here, have 
you?” 

“No; I’m supposed to be still in this white frock, 
locked up in the power of the border desperadoes.” 

“And I, praise Heaven, am through!” 

Kitty did sound profoundly grateful for the fact. 
Barrison thought she looked very tired and that her 
eyes were rather unhappy. She had played her 
part brilliantly and gayly, appearing, as usual, a 
fresh and adorable young girl. Now, seen at close 
range, she looked both weary and dispirited under 
the powder and grease paint. 

“I’m awfully fagged!” she confessed. “And my 
head is splitting. I think I’ll just sneak home.” 

“Oh, but Mr. Dukane will be wild!” exclaimed 
Sybil in protest. “Isn’t it a fad of his always to 
have the principals wait for the curtain calls, no 
matter when they’ve finished?” 

“Oh, stuff! We’re through with the regulation 
business, all of us bowing prettily after the third 
act, and Jack Carlton trying to make a speech that 
isn’t unintelligible with slang! That’s enough and 
to spare for one night. And I really feel wretched. 
Like the Snark, I shall slowly and silently vanish 
away! I call upon you, good people, to cover my 
exit.” 

She slipped into her dressing room, and a moment 


THE DARK SCENE 


91 


later the dresser, Parry, whose services were shared 
by her and Sybil, came out. She was a fat, pasty 
woman whose long life spent in the wardrobe rooms 
and dressing rooms of theateps seemed to have made 
her pallid with a cellarlike pallor. 

She disappeared around the corner that led to the 
stage door, and in a minute or so returned. As she 
opened Kitty’s door and entered, Barrison heard her 
say: 

“All right. Miss Legaye; Roberts is sending for a 
taxi.” 

Of the dressing rooms Kitty’s was the farthest 
back, Sybil’s next, and Mortimer’s—the star room— 
so far down as to be adjoining the property room, 
which was close to what is professionally known as 
“the first entrance.” There Willie Coster and his 
assistant ruled, supreme gods, over the electric 
switchboard. The passage to the stage door ran at 
right angles to the row of dressing rooms, so that 
any one coming in or out at the former would not be 
visible to any one standing near one of the rooms, 
unless he or she turned the corner made by the star 
dressing room. This particular point—^the turning 
near Mortimer’s door—^was further masked by the 
iron skeleton staircase which started near Sybil’s 
room and ran upward in a sharp slant to the second 
tier of dressing rooms where the small fry of the 
company and the extras dressed. 

It is rather important to understand this general 
plan. Make a note, also, that Mortimer’s big en- 


92 


THE SEVENTH SHOT 


trance in the “dark scene,” or, rather, at the close 
of it, must he made up a short flight of steps; that 
the scene was what is called a “box set”—a solid, 
four-walled inclosure; that it was but a step from 
the door of his own dressing room, and that the spot 
where he had to stand waiting for his entrance cue 
was in direct line, from one angle, with the stage 
door, and from another with the door conununicat- 
ing with the front of the house. This wait would 
be a fairly long one, since, when the dark scene was 
on, no lights of any sort would be permitted save 
perhaps the merest glimmer to avoid accidents. The 
actors were all expected to leave their lighted dress¬ 
ing rooms and have their doors closed before the 
melodramatic crash upon the stage told them that 
the property lantern had been duly smashed and 
that blackness must henceforth prevail until the 
“rescue.” 

“All ready?” came Willie Coster’s anxious voice. 
“The act is on. Miss Merivale, don’t stumble on 
those steps when you are trying to escape. You 
nearly twisted your ankle the other night. This is a 
rotten thing to stage. Lucky Carlton made it about 
as short as he possibly could. Playing a whole act 
practically in the dark! Fred, put that light out 
over there; it might cast a shadow.” 

“’Tain’t the dark scene yet!” growled the 
harassed sceneshifter addressed. He put it out, 
however. 

“My cue in a moment!” whispered Sybil. “I must 


THE DARK SCENE 93 

run! Where are my two deep-dyed ruffians who 
drag me on?” 

“Present!” said one of them, Norman Crane, 
laughing under his breath. 

They hurried down to their entrance, where the 
other “deep-dyed ruffian” awaited them. 

Kitty Legaye, in a vivid scarlet satin evening coat, 
stole cautiously out of her dressing room. 

“Shut that door!” commanded Willie in a sharp 
undertone. “No lights. Miss Legaye!” 

Parry closed it immediately. 

“And now, Mortimer!” added the stage manager 
in an exasperated mutter. “Of course he’ll let it go 
imtil the last moment, and then breeze out like a 
hurricane with his dressing-room door wide open 

and enough light to- What is it?” And he 

turned to hear a hasty question from his as¬ 
sistant. 

Kitty came close to Barrison and whispered be¬ 
seechingly : 

“Do, please, tell Mr. Dukane that I only went 
home because I really did feel ill. It’s—it’s been 
quite a hard evening for me.” Her brown eyes 
looked large and rather piteous. 

Barrison was sorry for her. She seemed such a 
plucky little creature, and so glitteringly, valiantly 
gay. Her red wrap all at once struck him as sym¬ 
bolic of the little woman herself. She was de¬ 
fiantly bright, like the coat. If her heart ached as 
well as her head, if she really was disappointed, 



THE SEVENTH SHOT 


hurt, unhappy—why, neither she nor the scarlet 
coat proposed to he anything hut gay! 

She waved her hand and tiptoed lightly away in 
the direction of the stage door. Barrison turned to 
look through a crack onto the stage. They were al¬ 
most—yes, they were actually ready for the dark 
scene. 

In another moment the lantern crashed upon the 
floor. There were shouts from the performers, and 
audible gasps from the audience. For a full half 
minute not a light showed anywhere in the house. 

Barrison felt oddly uncomfortable. The confu¬ 
sion, the noises from the stage, the inky blackness, 
all combined to arouse and increase that troubled, 
suffocating feeling of which he had been conscious 
earlier in the evening. The dark seemed full of 
curious sounds that were not all associated with the 
play. He almost felt his hair rise. 

A single one-candle electric hulh was turned on 
somewhere. Its rays only made the darkness more 
visible, rendered it more ghostly. 

A hand grasped his arm. 

“I thought—I saw a woman pass!” murmured 
Dukane’s voice. “Hello! There goes Mortimer to 
his entrance. He’s all right so far, anyway.” The 
actor’s huge bulk and characteristic swagger were 
just visible in the dimness as he left his room, clos¬ 
ing the door behind him at once. “Barrison, like a 
good fellow, go out to Roberts and find out if any 
one has tried to come in to-night.” 


THE DARK SCENE 95 

Dukane’s tone was strangely urgent, and Barrison 
groped his way to the stage door. 

The old doorkeeper, when questioned, shook his 
head. 

“No one’s passed here since seven o’clock,” he de¬ 
clared emphatically. “No one except Miss Legaye, 
just a minute ago.” 

“You’re sure?” 

“Sure!” exclaimed the man, misunderstanding 
him. “I guess there ain’t any two ladies with a 
coat the color of that one! I see it at dress re¬ 
hearsal, and it sure woke me up. I like lively 
things, I does; pity there ain’t more ladies wears 
’em.” 

Barrison laughed. 

“I didn’t mean that,” he said. “I know Miss Le¬ 
gaye went out; but you’re sure no one came in?” 

“I tell you, no one’s gone by here since-” 

Barrison did not wait for a repetition of his as¬ 
severations, but went back toward the stage. The 
“rescue scene” was just beginning. Willie Coster, 
a faint silhouette against the one dim bulb, was 
conducting the shots like the leader of an orchestra: 

“One! Two! Three! Four! Five! Six!” 

The six shots rang out with precision and thrill¬ 
ing resonance. And then Jim Barrison grew icy cold 
from head to foot. 

For there came a seventh shot. 

And it was followed by the wild and terrifying 
sound of a woman’s scream. 



CHAPTER VIII 


AWAITING THE POLICE 

T hat scream echoed across the blackness. There 
was a smell of gunpowder in the air. It 
seemed an interminably long time before the lights 
flared up, and the big curtain was rung down. At 
last it formed a wall between the people on the stage 
and the people in the audience, all about equally ex¬ 
cited by this time. 

“What is it—oh, what is it that’s happened?” 
gasped Claire McAllister. 

Other women in the company echoed the be¬ 
wildered and frightened cry. Panic was loose 
among them—panic and that horror of the unknown 
and uncomprehended which is the worst of all hor¬ 
rors. “What is it?” ran the quivering question from 
mouth to mouth like wind in the grass. 

Barrison and Dukane knew what had happened 
even before, with one accord, they dashed to the 
little flight of steps where Mortimer must have been 
waiting for his entrance cue. One look was enough. 
Then the manager’s voice, clear and authoritative, 
rang out: 

“Quiet there, every one. Mr. Mortimer has been 
shot” 

And swiftly upon the startling statement came 


AWAITING THE POLICE 97 

Barrison’s command, given with professional sharp¬ 
ness: 

“Nobody is to leave the theater, please, until the 
police have been here!” 

Shuddering and silent now, the men and women 
drew back as though the quiet figure upon the floor 
were a living menace, instead of something which 
never again could commit an action of help or of 
harm. 

Alan Mortimer must have died instantly. 

He lay at the foot of the steps, with his painted 
face upturned to the blaze of the glaring electric 
lights, and an ugly crimson patch of moisture upon 
the front of his khaki uniform. There was some¬ 
thing indescribably ghastly in the sight of the 
make-up upon that dead countenance. 

Old Wrenn, the valet, was kneeling at the side of 
his dead master, trying to close the eyes with his 
shaking, wrinkled fingers, and making no attempt 
to hide the tears that rolled silently down his 
cheeks. But, after one look into the stony, painted 
face of the murdered man, Jim Barrison turned his 
attention elsewhere. 

At the head of the four little steps stood Sybil 
Merivale, in the white costume of Lucille, as mo¬ 
tionless as if she were frozen, with her hands locked 
together. No ice maiden could have been more still, 
and there was a chill horror in her look. 

“Miss Merivale,” said Barrison quickly, “you were 
standing there when he was shot?” 


98 


THE SEVENTH SHOT 


Slowly she bent her head in assent, and seemed 
to be trying to speak, but no sound came from her 
ashen lips. 

“Was it you who screamed?” 

“I—think so.” She spoke with obvious difficulty. 
“I was frightened. I think—I screamed. I don’t 
know.” 

Then every one who was watching started and 
suppressed the shock they felt; for she had moved 
her hands at last—the hands which had been so 
convulsively clasped before her. And on her white 
frock was a long splash of scarlet. One of the slim 
hands, as every one could see, was dyed the same 
sinister hue. 

She raised it, and looked at it, with her eyes di¬ 
lating strangely. 

“His blood!” she murmured, in a barely audible 
voice. 

Dukane had sent Willie Coster out before the cur¬ 
tain to disperse the audience. The police had been 
sent for; the doors were guarded. Some of the girls 
in the company were sobbing. Only Sybil Merivale 
preserved that attitude of awful calm. She seemed 
unable to move of her own volition, and remained 
blind and deaf to every elfort to help her down the 
four steps. 

It was young Norman Crane, finally, who took 
her hand in both his, and gently made her descend. 
Then, as she stood there, looking like a pale ghost 
in her white dress with the rather dull make-up 


AWAITING THE POLICE 99 

that the scene had demanded, the hoy put his arm 
gently aroimd her. 

“It’s all right, dear,” he said tenderly. “Don’t 
look so wild, Sybil. Of course, it was a shock to 
you, but you must rouse yourself now.” He looked 
at Barrison as he spoke, and the detective thought 
that there was a touch of defiance in his tone as he 
emphasized the words, “Of course it was a shock to 
you.” He seemed anxious to establish definitely 
this fact. 

Jim quite understood and sympathized with him. 
That Sybil had had anything to do with Mortimer’s 
death the detective did not for a moment believe, 
but her position was certainly an equivocal one. 
This young actor was clearly in love with her, and 
the situation must be an agonizing one for him. 

In confirmation of his conclusions, Barrison heard 
Crane say to Dukane: 

“Miss Merivale and I are engaged to be married, 
sir. She is very much upset, as you see. Will you 
let me take her to her dressing room?” 

Dukane looked doubtfully at Barrison, who shook 
his head. 

“I shall be very grateful if Miss Merivale will 
stay where she is until the police come,” he said 
courteously, but firmly. “You might see if you can’t 
find her a chair.” For he had no desire to let a 
witness out of his sight at this stage of the game. 

Norman Crane flushed under his make-up. “I 


100 


THE SEVENTH SHOT 


think you are going rather far!” he exclaimed hotly. 
“Surely you don’t think- 

“I think,” said Barrison, deliberately cutting him 
short, “that you had better get the chair, and—^has 
any one any brandy? Miss Merivale looks very bad 
indeed.” 

Old Wrenn spoke in a tremulous voice. “There 
is some in his—^in the dressing room, sir.” 

He went off and brought it, then stood once more 
beside the body, wiping his shriveled old cheeks. 
Barrison, seeing his evident and genuine grief, made 
a mental chalk mark to the credit of Alan Mor¬ 
timer. There must have been some good in the man, 
some element of the kind and the lovable, to have 
won the devotion of this old servant. 

Crane held the brandy to Sybil’s lips, and she 
drank a little mechanically. After a moment or so, 
her eyes became less strained, her whole expression 
more natural, and instead of the frozen blankness 
which had been in her face before, there now 
dawned a more living and at the same time an in¬ 
explicable fear. She looked up at the face of her 
young lover with a sort of sharp question in her 
blue eyes, a look which puzzled Jim Barrison as he 
caught it. What was it that she was mutely ask¬ 
ing him? What was it that she was afraid of? 

It had been scarcely five minutes since Mor¬ 
timer’s murder, yet already it seemed a long time. 
They all felt as though that still figure on the floor 
had been there for hours. Dukane would have had 



AWAITING THE POLICE 101 

the dead man moved to his dressing room, but Bar- 
rison insisted that everything should be left as it 
was. It was just then that he espied a small object 
glittering on the floor just beyond the steps. He 
stooped, picked it up, and put it in his pocket. As 
he turned he saw, to his surprise, Tony Clay ap¬ 
proaching. 

The older detective stared and frowned. 

“Where is Miss Templeton?” he demanded 
sharply. “I told you to stay with her whatever 
happened. Where is she?” 

“That’s what I want to know,” said Tony. “She’s 
gone!” 

“Gone! When did she go?” 

“Just before the dark scene. She felt faint and 
sent me for a glass of water. Before I got back, 
all that row on the stage started, and when the 
lights were turned on again, she’d gone; that’s all.” 

“All!” groaned Barrison despairingly. “Tony, you 
fool! You fool! Well, it’s too late to mend matters 
now.” 

“Did anything happen, after all?” asked Tony, 
with round eyes. 

Barrison stood aside and let him see Mortimer’s 
dead body, which had been hidden from his view 
by the little group around Sybil. 

“Oh, Heaven!” gasped Tony, horror-stricken. 
“Then you don’t think she—Miss Templeton—did it? 
Why, Jim, she couldn’t—^there wasn’t time!” 

“I don’t think so myself. But it’s not our business 


102 


THE SEVENTH SHOT 


to do any thinking at all—^just yet. This can be a 
lesson to you, Tony. When you’re watching a per¬ 
son, watch *emr 

“Well, I think it can be a lesson to you, too!” said 
Tony unexpectedly. “You’ve been acting all along 
as though this affair were a movie scenario, that 
you thought was entertaining, but not a bit serious, 
and-” 

Jim Barrison flushed deeply and miserably. “I 
know it, Tony,” he said, in a very grave voice, 
“Don’t make any mistake about it; I’m getting mine! 
I’ll never forgive myself as long as I live.” 

Willie Coster came up to tliem. He was paler and 
wilder-eyed than ever, and his scant red hair stood 
stiffly erect. Poor Willie! In all his long years of 
nightmarish first nights, this was the worst. Any, 
one who knew him could read in his eyes the agon¬ 
ized determination to go and get drunk as soon as 
he possibly could. 

“The police inspector has come,” he said, in a low 
tone. “And, say, when you get to sifting things 
down. I’ve something to say myself.” 

“You have! You know who fired the seventh 
shot?” 

“I didn’t say that. But if you’ll ask me some 
questions by and by, I may have something to tell 
you.” 


CHAPTER IX 


RECONSTRUCTING THE CRIME 

INSPECTOR LOWRY was an old friend of Bar- 
* rison’s, though, like most of the regular force, 
inclined to treat the younger man as a dilettante 
rather than an astute professional. However, he 
was quite ready to include Jim in the investigation 
which he set about making without loss of time. 

Lowry was a big, raw-boned man of middle age, 
with a peculiarly soft, amiable voice, and a habit 
of looking at almost any point on earth save the 
face of the person to whom he was speaking. 
This seemingly indifferent manner gave him an 
enormous advantage over any luckless soul whom 
he chanced to be examining, for when he shot 
the question which was of all questions the most 
vital and the most important, he would suddenly 
open his eyes and turn their piercing gaze full 
upon his victim. That unfortunate, having by 
that time relaxed his self-guard, would be apt to 
betray his innermost emotions under the unexpected 
gaze. 

Naturally, the first thing to do was to get Sybil 
Merivale’s story. 

His manner to the girl was not unkindly. She 
was a piteous figure enough, as she sat drooping 


104 


THE SEVENTH SHOT 


in the chair they had brought her, trying to keep 
her eyes from turning, with a dreadful fascination, 
to the spatter of red upon the steps so near her. 
Norman Crane stood at her side, with the air of 
defying the imiverse, if it were necessary, for 
her protection. Once in a while she would look 
up at him, and always with that subtle expres¬ 
sion of apprehension and uncertainty which Bar- 
rison found so hard to read. 

“Miss—ah—Merivale? Quite so, quite so. Miss 
Merivale, if you feel strong enough, I should be 
glad if you would tell us what you know about 
the shooting.” The inspector’s voice was mild as 
honey, and his glance wandered about this queer, 
shadowy world behind the scenes. It is doubtful 
if he had ever made an investigation in such sur¬ 
roundings. To see him, one would have said that 
he was interested in everything except in Sybil 
Merivale and what she had to tell. 

“I don’t know anything about it,” she answered 
simply. 

“But you were quite close to him when he was 
shot, were you not?” 

“Yes.” She shuddered, and looked down at the 
stain of blood upon her dress. “He was just 
taking me up in his arms to carry me on- 

“That was in the—ah—action of the play?” 

“Yes. After the six shots, I heard another, and 
felt him stagger. I slipped to the floor, and he 
fell at once. He put out his hand to catch at the 



RECONSTRUCTING THE CRIME 105 

scenery.” She pointed to the canvas door of the 
stage set which still stood open. “I felt something 
warm on my hand.” She closed her eyes as though 
the remembrance made her faint. “Then he—he 
fell backward down the steps. That’s all.” 

“Ah, yes.” The inspector thought for a moment, 
and then he said to Dukane: “Would it be possible 
for every one to go to the places they occupied at 
the moment of the shooting? I am assuming that 
every one is here who was here then?” 

“Every one; so far as I know, no one has been 
allowed to leave the theater. Willie, tell them to 
take their places.” 

Willie caused a rather ghastly sensation when 
he called out: “Everybody, please! On the stage, 
every one who is in the last act!” 

There was a murmur among the actors. 

“Good Lord!” muttered Claire McAllister. “They 
ain’t goin’ to rehearse us now, are they?” 

Dukane explained, and with all the lights blazing, 
the players took the positions they had occupied at 
the beginning of the dark scene. Stage carpenters 
and sceneshifters did the same; also Willie and 
his assistant, even Dukane and Barrison. The 
woman Parry and old Wrenn went into the dressing 
rooms, where they had been, and closed the doors. 
Sybil Merivale mounted the little flight of steps 
and stood at the top, looking through the open 
door onto the stage. 

“Is that just the way you stood?” 


106 


THE SEVENTH SHOT 


Every one answered “yes” to this question. 

One or two things became apparent by this plan, 
which rather surprised Barrison. He had not, for 
one thing, realized how close Willie Coster stood 
to the place where Mortimer fell. Yet, of course, 
he should have expected it. It was, as a matter 
of fact, Willie who directed the six shots, which 
were supposed to come from the point back of 
Tarrant*s entrance. There were, as it turned out, 
at least three persons who were so close as to 
have been material witnesses had there been any 
light: Willie, the man who fired the shots and 
had charge of other off-stage effects, and—Norman 
Crane. 

Crane took up his position immediately inside 
the box set, close to the doorway. 

“Is that where you stood?” asked Lowry. 

“Yes. I played the part of a Mexican desperado, 
and was supposed to be on guard at the door 
leading down into the cellar, which was the stage.” 

“The door was open, as it is now?” 

“Yes.” 

“Then you could have seen through it anything 
that happened on the steps off stage?” 

“I could have if there had been light enough.” 

“As it was, you didn’t see anything?” 

“No.” 

“Didn’t hear anything? 

The young man seemed to pause for just a 
moment before he said “No,” to this question also. 


RECONSTRUCTING THE CRIME 107 

If the inspector noticed his hesitation, he did not 
appear to do so. He began to talk in an undertone 
to one of the men who had come with him. 

John Carlton had been sending in frantic mes¬ 
sages ever since the tragedy, begging to be per¬ 
mitted to come behind, but the allied powers there 
agreed that there were enough people marooned as it 
was. There was nothing to be gained by adding an¬ 
other, and one whom it would probably be unneces¬ 
sary either to hold or to bind with nervousness and 
disappointment. 

In an undertone, Dukane said to Jim Rarrison: 
“I thought they always sent for a doctor first of 
all? Why isn’t there one here?” 

“There is,” returned Jim, in the same tone. 
“He’s over there with the two policemen and the 
plain-clothes man who came in with Lowry—^the 
little, old fellow with spectacles. Lowry’ll call on 
him again in a moment; he examined the body and 
pronounced life extinct. That was all that was 
absolutely necessary. Lowry has his own way of 
doing things, and he’s supreme in his department. 
He’s ‘reconstructing the crime’ just now.” 

Rarrison, indeed, was listening with gradually 
increasing interest. This method which was being 
employed by Inspector Lowry, sometimes known 
as the “reconstruction-of-the-crime” method, was 
rather old-fashioned, and many younger and more 
modern men preferred the more scientific, analytical, 
and deductive ways of solving mysteries. Yet 


108 


THE SEVENTH SHOT 


there was something distinctly fascinating, even 
illuminating, about the inspector’s simple, sure-fire 
fashion of setting his stage and perhaps his trap 
at one and the same time. Barrison felt his own 
veins tingle with the leap of his roused blood. 

“Barrison,” said Lowry pleasantly, “just go up 
there on those steps, and be Mortimer for a 
minute. So!” The younger man obeyed with 
alacrity. “Miss Merivale, was that about where 
he stood?” 

“Yes.” 

“And you are sure that you yourself were just 
where you are now?” 

“Yes.” 

“Just there, you know. Not more to the right?” 

She glanced at him with faint wonder. 

“I think I may have been a little more to the 
right,” she said. “That is, to your right, and my 
left. But I don’t see why you thought so—and it 
doesn’t matter, does it?” 

“And you, Mr. Crane,” pursued the inspector, 
paying no attention to her last words, ‘‘you are 
absolutely certain of where you stood?” 

“Absolutely.” 

“Ah, yes, quite so; quite sol” murmured Lowry, 
looking dreamily into space. Suddenly he faced 
about and said sharply: “Mr. Crane, will you 
kindly lift your right hand and point it at Mr. 
Barrison? Just so; exactly! At that range, you 
could hardly have missed him.” 


RECONSTRUCTING THE CRIME 109 

Norman Crane clenched his lists in a white heat 
of indignation. “You dare to imply- 

“Only what your fiancee has already been fear¬ 
ing,” said the inspector calmly, “that your position 
in this matter is, to say the least, not less un¬ 
pleasant than hers. You were, as is evident, only 
a few feet away from the man.” 

Crane started to speak, but checked himself. 
Barrison thought he knew what he would have 
said; or, if he was not going to say it, he should 
have, for the direction of the bullet was a thing 
which ought to be easily determined. But some¬ 
thing prevented the yoimg actor from uttering 
anything resembling a protest; it was simple to 
see what it was. 

Sybil Merivale, however unwillingly or uncon¬ 
sciously, had given color to suspicion against him 
by the low, heart-broken sobbing into which she 
had broken at the bare suggestion. 

After one quick look at the obvious distress of 
the young girl whom he loved so well, Norman 
Crane suddenly changed his antagonistic attitude. 
He faced the detectives quietly, and said to them, 
in a manner that was not without dignity: 

“Very well. I admit that it looks bad for me. 
I suppose that is enough? If you feel that you 
have any case at all against me, I shall make no 
trouble. Do you mean to arrest me?” 

The inspector looked at him rather more directly 
than was his wont, and also longer. 



110 


THE SEVENTH SHOT 


At last he allowed himself to smile, and though 
he was known to be a hard man with even possible 
criminals, the smile was singularly pleasant just 
then. 

“Bless you,” he remarked tranquilly, “that’s all 
a matter for our medical friends to settle! If the 
bullet entered the body at a certain angle and a 
certain range, it will let you out.” 

“Then all this,” exclaimed Crane angrily—^it was 
so like a boy to be most enraged when most relieved 
—“all this is waste of time—pure theatrics?” 

But at this point Willie Coster interfered. “Say, 
Mr. Inspector,” he said, awkwardly but deter¬ 
minedly, “Fm not crazy about a spotlight on 
myself, but just here there’s something I ought to 
say. I was pretty close by, myself, you under¬ 
stand.” 

“Exactly where you are now?” 

“Yes. And until the lantern was broken in the 
scrap scene, there was a little light shining through 
that door from the stage. See?” 

“Yes!” It was not only the representatives of the 
law who listened eagerly now. “Go on, man, go on!” 

“Well”—^Willie hesitated, gulped, and plunged 
ahead—“I saw a woman’s shadow on the wall, 
and she had something in her hand. That’s all I 
wanted to say.” 

“Something in her-— A revolver?” 

“I don’t know.” 



RECONSTRUCTING THE CRIME 111 

“Would you be prepared to—ah—say that you 
recognized the shadow?” 

“I would not. One woman’s shadow’s much like 
another, so far as I can see; and the women, too, 
for that matter! I never troubled to tell ’em apart!” 

“And you won’t even express a—ah—an im¬ 
pression as to whether what this shadow woman 
held was a weapon or not?” 

“No!” snapped Willie impatiently. “Why should 
I? I didn’t think about it at the time. I was 
waiting to time those shots. All I know is that it 
was a woman, and that she was holding some¬ 
thing. She had something in her hand.” 

“I’d give something if I had it in mine!” mut¬ 
tered the inspector fervently, more fervently than 
he usually permitted himself to speak when on a 
case. 

Barrison put his hand in his pocket and drew 
out the thing which he had found in the shadow 
of the miniature stairway. He thought it the 
proper time to hand it over, and he said: 

“I think you have it now, Lowry! The barrel 
was still warm when I picked it up a few minutes 
after the murder.” 


CHAPTER X 


FACTS AND FANCIES 

A SHORT while later the inspector addressed 
them mildly: 

‘T very often get a great deal of blame because 
I won’t do things in a regulation way. But, even 
while I get the blame, I also get the results—some¬ 
times, not always.” The inspector looked around 
him thoughtfully, and repeated: “Not always. As 
most people know, the first thing we must do in 
locating a crime is to find out who could have 
done it; next, who wanted to do it. The oppor¬ 
tunity is valueless without the wish; the wish is 
not enough without the opportunity. But, of the 
two essential points, the opportunity is the big 
thing. For instance, some one standing in Miss 
Merivale’s position—I mean, of course, her physical 
position—^might have that opportunity. It also 
seems to me that some one standing on the stage 
level, on the right of the steps, and reaching 
upward, would have practically the same oppor¬ 
tunity.” 

He took the little pistol and balanced it lightly 
in his big hand. Then he walked over to the 
point at which the weapon had been found at 
the side of the steps which was farthest from 
the front. 


FACTS AND FANCIES 


113 


He raised his arm and pointed at Barrison, who 
still stood where Mortimer had been standing. 

“You see,” he said, “it could have been done 
this way. The bullet would have entered the 
body under the right arm as he picked Miss 
Merivale up, supposing her story to have been true.” 

“Then,” exclaimed Norman Crane eagerly, “that 
eliminates both Miss Merivale and myself from 
the suspects!” 

“It surely eliminates you,” rejoined the police 
officer calmly, “because you couldn’t have thrown 
this gun through the door so that it fell where it 
did fall, unless you were a particularly skillful 
baseball pitcher; and then you couldn’t! But, 
as for Miss Merivale—Miss Merivale, we will sup¬ 
pose that you are going to shoot this man; please 
consider Mr. Barrison in that light. He is taller 
than you; the weapon you use may be held close 
to your side to avoid detection.” 

“I had no weapon!” she flashed. 

“Naturally not, naturally not!” agreed the in¬ 
spector, with a pacific wave of his hand. “But 
you might have had, you know- 

“How could-” 

“Pouf, pouf, my dear Miss Merivale! How you 
carried it—or, rather, could have carried it, is a 
secondary matter. I never saw a woman’s cos¬ 
tume yet in which she could not secrete anything 
she wanted. Your dress is one of the very modern, 
extra loose coat affairs; there are a hundred ways 




114 


THE SEVENTH SHOT 


in which you could have secreted anything you 
wished. I didn’t say you had; I merely said that 
you were foolish to say it was impossible. As I 
was saying, if you did happen to have a pistol 
and did happen to shoot it off at Mr. Mortimer, 
the angle would be very much the same as that 
taken by the bullet of some one standing somewhat 
below and reaching upward as far as they could.” 

“Oh!” cried Sybil breathlessly. “You forget— 
he would have been shot squarely in front, if I 
had done it—or Norman!” 

“Yes?” said Lowry, pleasantly attentive. 

“Why, yes!” she reminded him. “He was facing 
me.” 

“We have only your word,” said the officer gently. 

“I-began Norman Crane impulsively, then 

stopped in discomfort. He recalled that he had 
sworn not to have seen anything through the open 
door. 

Lowry, on the other hand, restrained himself 
from reminding him that his testimony under the 
circumstances would be rather worse than nothing. 
To cover up any awkwardness, he went on: “With¬ 
out any discourtesy to you, we are bound to 
consider any and all possibilities.” 

“But,” protested Norman Crane, “you said all 
that would be settled by the doctors!” 

“I said your part of it would be; not, neces¬ 
sarily, Miss Merivale’s. Doctor Colton?” 

The little man with spectacles stepped forward. 


FACTS AND FANCIES 115 

and, after a brief interchange of words with the 
inspector, bent over the body of Mortimer. 

Lowry turned to Dukane. “I should like to 
have the murdered man carried in somewhere, just 
as soon as the medical examiner arrives and sees 
it. The dressing room? Is that tlie closest? Quite 
so—quite so! That will do excellently. Very 
near, isn’t it? Quite convenient.” His eye meas¬ 
ured the distance between the door of the room 
and the spot where the murder had taken place. 

“Just a moment first, though. I want to- Oh, 

here’s the medical examiner now. In a minute 
I think you may dismiss your people, most of 
them, that is. We shall know where to reach 
them, if necessary, eh?” 

“Of ©©urse—at any time.” 

“Then they may all go—except Miss Merivale, 
and—let me see—the man who was on guard 
at the door between the front and back. And 
your stagedoor keeper; I shall want to speak to 
him a bit later. But the rest—what do you call 
them—supers ?” 

“Extras. I may dismiss the extras?” 

“I think so. They were all on the stage, or up¬ 
stairs in the upper tier of rooms, weren’t they?” 

“Yes.” 

“Then I doubt if we want them-” 

Barrison, though unwillingly, was obliged to whis¬ 
per that Claire McAllister should be held. He 
knew that she was bound to talk sooner or later 



116 


THE SEVENTH SHOT 


about Sybil’s attitude toward the dead man, and 
he felt that it might as well be sooner as later. 
Barrison, looking toward the star dressing room, 
saw that the door was a little open, and that old 
Wrenn was standing in the aperture, with an ex¬ 
pression of intense agitation upon his wrinkled 
face. Whether the look was horror, grief, or fear, 
it would be impossible at that juncture to say. 
Barrison rather believed it was the latter. Though 
of what could that old man be so acutely afraid? 

There was another person who was taking an 
exceptional interest in the proceedings, the uni¬ 
formed guard who had been placed on duty at 
the communicating door, the young man whom 
the inspector had said he wished to question later. 
Lowry suddenly turned upon him. 

“Is that where you stood at the time of the 
shooting?” he demanded. 

The young man started and flushed. 

“N-no, sir,” he stammered; “I was over there 
by the door.” 

“Then go back there over by the door, and stay 
there until you are told to move.” 

The man retreated hastily, looking crestfallen, and 
muttering something under his breath. 

Somehow, although the extras had been dismissed, 
and the body was to be removed, Barrison felt 
that Lowry had not yet quite finished with his 
reconstruction work, so scornfully stigmatized by 


FACTS AND FANCIES 117 

young Crane as “theatrics.” His instinct was not 
at fault. 

The inspector wheeled very suddenly toward 
Sybil Merivale. “Miss Merivale,” he said, “you 
have already given us some testimony which doubt¬ 
less was unpleasant to give. I am going to beg 
you to be even more generous. You have said 
that you stood there at the head of the steps, 
waiting for your cue. I should like you now to 
be more detailed. You are relating, remember, what 
occurred within the last two minutes of Alan Mor¬ 
timer’s life. There could scarcely be two minutes 
more important, and I must ask you as solemnly 
and urgently as I can to omit nothing that could 
possibly throw any light upon the problem of 
how he met his death. Will you repeat what 
you said before, with any additions that come to 
you as you strain your memory?” 

“I don’t understand,” she faltered wearily. “What 
more is there to tell?” 

“Try to remember!” said the inspector. 

Barrison was convinced that he was bluffing, 
and that he had no idea of anything further that 
the girl could tell, but to his surprise Sybil flushed 
painfully and looked away. The younger detective 
shook his head in silent admiration. The inspector 
might be old-fashioned, but he had his inspirations. 

“I was waiting for my cue,” she began, in a 
low voice, “and looking at the stage through the 
open door. I have told you that.” 


118 


THE SEVENTH SHOT 


“What was your cue, Miss Merivale?” 

“But you know that—after the lantern was 
broken, there were to be six shots, and he”—she 
would not mention his name—“was to carry me 
on in his arms.” 

“Well, go on,” said the inspector gently enough. 
“It is true that we have heard this before. Miss 
Merivale, but in my experience even the most honest 
witness—even the most honest witness”—^he re¬ 
peated the words with faint emphasis—“seldom 
tells a story precisely the same twice. You were 
standing there-” 

“I was standing there, and I heard him come 
up behind me.” 

“How did you know it was Mr. Mortimer if 
you were not looking in his direction?” 

“I heard him speak.” 

“What did he say?” 

“I don’t know. He was muttering to himself. 

He seemed horribly angry—upset. I thought-” 

She checked herself. 

“What did you think?” 

“That—^he had been drinking. He—he was— 
very much excited. He kept muttering things 
under his breath, and once he stumbled.” 

Dukane interposed. “Mortimer — drank — occa¬ 
sionally; but he was cold sober to-night. I know.” 

“Ah!” The inspector nodded dreamily. “Then 
it was something else which had upset him; quite 
so. You see, one gets more from the second 



FACTS AND FANCIES 


119 


telling than the first. Go on, if you please, Miss 
Merivale. You knew from his voice that he was 
excited. Did he come up onto the steps at once?” 

“I—I don’t know.” She looked at him appeal¬ 
ingly; she seemed honestly confused. “When he 
spoke to me—I should think perhaps he had taken 
a step or so up—I don’t know. I didn’t turn 
round at once.” 

“Ah, he spoke to you. And said—^what?” 

“Do I have to tell that?” She flushed and then 
paled. “It hasn’t—truly, it hasn’t—anything to do 
with—all this!” she pleaded. 

“I’m afraid we will have to be the judge of 
that,” Lowry said, quite gently; Barrison had an 
idea that the old sleuth was truly sorry for the 
girl, but he never willingly left a trail. “What 
did he say?” 

“He said—^he said: ‘If you knew the state of 
mind I’m in, you’d think I was showing great 
self-control toward you, this minute I’ That’s 

exactly what he said.” 

“What did he mean by that?” demanded the 
inspector, surprised and not taking the trouble, for 
once, to hide it. 

She was silent. 

“I asked you. Miss Merivale, if you have any 
idea what he meant by so peculiar a greeting? 
Can you think of anything in your acquaintance— 
in your relation with him—^which might explain it?” 

“Yes!” she said, lifting her head and answering 


120 


THE SEVENTH SHOT 


boldly. “I know perfectly well what he meant. 
He was excited or probably he would not have 
said it then, for he cared awfully about his pro¬ 
fession, his work on the stage, and he would 
ordinarily have been thinking most of that, just 
then. But he meant—I am sure he meant that— 
the darkness gave him—opportunities.” 

“Opportunities ?” 

“Opportimities—such as—such as—he had abused 
before.” 

There was the pause of a breath. 

“You mean,” said Inspector Lowry, “that he had 
forced his attentions upon you in the past?” 

“Yes.” 

“Against your will? I asked you—against your 
will?” 

“I had always refused his attentions,” she an¬ 
swered, with hesitation. 

The detectives noted the change of phrase as 
she answered, but the inspector made no comment. 

“Very well,” he said. “What did you answer 
then? I presume you turned round to face him?” 

“Yes, I did.” 

“What did you answer?” 

“I didn’t say anything—then.” 

“Ah—not then! What did you do. Miss Meri- 
vale? Did you hear me?” 

“Yes, I heard you. I did not do anything. I 
stood still. I was frightened.” 

“You stood still, facing him. Could you see him?” 


FACTS AND FANCIES 


121 


“Yes. He was just below me. I could see him, 
and I thought I heard him laugh in a—a dreadful 
way. He came up two of the steps, and I could 
see his face.” 

“It was not the dark scene yet?” 

“No; the lantern was not yet out. It was dark, 
but not pitch dark. His face frightened me. He 
had frightened me before.” 

“And did Mr. Mortimer speak to you again?” 

“Yes.” 

The answer came in a gasping breath, and Nor¬ 
man Crane seemed to echo it unconsciously. He 
was following every syllable that she spoke with 
a terrible attentiveness, and at that last “yes” he 
shuddered and drew his breath quickly. Lowry 
fixed him with that disconcerting, unexpected look 
of his. 

“So that was what you heard through the open 
door!” he said, making it a statement, not a query. 
“Well, Miss Merivale, he was coming up the steps 
toward you, and he said-” 

“He said, ‘When I pick you up to-night to 
carry you onto the stage—I shall kiss you T ” 

The shudder that came with this admission shook 
her. Her eyes turned toward the body which, for 
some reason, had not yet been taken away, and 
in their gaze there was fear and loathing, and— 
it might be—contempt. 

“Ah!” said Inspector Lowry, apparently unsur¬ 
prised. “And what did you answer, Miss Merivale?” 



122 


THE SEVENTH SHOT 


She hardly seemed to hear. Her eyes were still 
fixed upon that dead face, awful in its paint and 
powder, such a handsome face, lately so full of 
compelling charm, even now a face that one could 
scarcely pass without a second look. 

“What did you say. Miss Merivale?” 

She paused for only a moment; then, looking 
straight at the inspector, she replied very deliber¬ 
ately indeed: 

“I said: Tf you do that—I shall kill you!’” 


CHAPTER XI 


IN THE STAR DRESSING ROOM 

A. BRIEF pause followed Sybil’s unexpectedly 
dramatic statement. Then Inspector Lowry 
bowed gravely. 

“That is all, Miss Merivale,” he said, without 
looking at her. “We shall not want you for a 
while, though I shall have to speak to you again 
later. I should advise you, as a friend, to go 
to your own dressing room to rest.” 

“May I—^mayn’t I—^go home?” she asked pit¬ 
eously. But on such points as these no amount 
of courtesy or human sympathy could make Lowry 
less inexorable. 

“Not just yet,” he said calmly. “Later, we shall 
see. Go and rest, my dear young lady. Do go 
and rest!” 

Norman Crane started forward to help her, but, 
to every one’s surprise, Claire McAllister, the extra 
woman who had been kept for possibly revelant 
testimony, was before him. 

“You come with me, you poor kid I” she ex¬ 
claimed, as tenderly as she possibly could. “I’ll 
see to you. Gee, but this is a bunch of boobs, 
not to see that you’re about as apt to get in 
wrong as a two-months’ one! Come on, deary!” 


124 


THE SEVENTH SHOT 


They vanished within the dressing room wherein 
Sybil had dressed for a possible triumph that 
selfsame evening—hard as it was for any of them 
to believe it. That evening? It might just as 
well have been a month earlier, and even Dukane, 
the imperturbable, was haggard with the strain 
already. 

To him Lowry said something in a low voice, 
and the manager turned at once to Mortimer’s 
valet, still standing at the door: 

“Wrenn, clear the couch in there. We are-” 

He paused, respecting the man’s feelings, and 
ended gently: “We are bringing him in.” 

They carried the big, splendidly made form into 
the room which he had left such a short time 
before, in such a high tide of life and strength. 
There was nothing of tragedy in this setting. Bar- 
rison looked about him curiously, as though he 
were in a queer sort of dream in which all manner 
of incongruities might be expected. 

There were brilliant electric bulbs topping and 
framing the glass on the dressing table; Barrison 
knew that actors were obliged to test their make-up 
under various lighting effects, and there was some¬ 
thing darkly strange in this array of lights still 
ready for a test that could not come again—for 
Mortimer. At that same table, under the same 
bulbs, other stars would put on paint and wigs 
and costumes. This one would do so no more. 

In that vivid glare, the litter of the paraphernalia 



IN THE STAR DRESSING ROOM 


125 


of make-up glowed with a somewhat gay, decorative 
effect. Rouge boxes and cold-cream jars and sticks 
of grease paint lay just as he had left them. Evi¬ 
dently Mortimer had been “touching up” for the 
last act, and the valet had not yet had time to clear 
up or put away anything. 

Lowry’s keen eyes ran over the room, in that 
seemingly cursory hut actually minute inspection 
which characterized his methods. There was noth¬ 
ing about it unlike other theatrical dressing rooms. 
There was the usual long dresser with its rows of 
brilliant bulbs; there were the clothes hanging on 
the walls; there was the couch—now bearing that 
tragic burden, the magnificent body in khaki—the 
big trunk, the two chairs—the small one by the 
table, and the easy one for rest and visitors. Ap¬ 
parently, there was nothing in the room for a 
detective to note, save the dead man, and—here 
the inspector’s glance became more vague, a sure 
sign that he was particularly interested, for he was 
looking at Wrenn. 

The old man, in his decent black clothes, was 
standing near the couch; and he was watching 
the intruders with a sort of baleful combination 
of terror and resentment. The fear which he had 
shown in his face when he looked out of the 
dressing-room door a few minutes since, had not 
vanished from it; but to it was added another, 
and a not less violent emotion. He was angry, 
he was on the defensive. He might, for the mo- 


126 


THE SEVENTH SHOT 


ment, have been some cornered animal, frightened, 
but nevertheless about to spring upon his enemy. 

It was against Lowry’s principles to ask ques¬ 
tions at such moments as might be considered 
obvious; so it was Dukane who said, with some 
asperity: 

“What’s the matter, Wrenn?” 

The old man’s face worked and his voice shook, 
as he returned: 

“Mr. Dukane, sir—^you—you aren’t going to let 
all these people in here, to poke and pry about among 
my poor master’s things? It’s—it’s a wicked shame, 
so it is! I’d never have thought it possible! It’s 
an outrage-” 

“You’re crazy, Wrenn!” said Dukane, trying to 
remember the old fellow’s bereavement, and doing 
his best to speak kindly instead of impatiently. 
“These are detectives, officers of the law. They 
are on this case, and they have a perfect right 
to do anything they want to.” 

“But, sir”—^the old servant was working himself 
up more and more, and his cracked voice was grow¬ 
ing shrill—“what are they doing here, sir? What 
can they have to do here? Can’t his—his poor 
body rest in peace without a—a lot of policemen 
poking-” 

The inspector interrupted him placidly. “Much 
obliged for the suggestion, Wrenn! We might 
not have thought of searching this dressing room, 
hut, thanks to you, we certainly will now!” 


IN THE STAR DRESSING ROOM 127 

“Of course,” he said to Rarrison later, “we’d 
have had to do it anyway, but I wanted to scare 
that old chap into thinking it was chiefly his doing!” 

Wrenn gasped. “Oh, sir, oh, Mr. Dukane!” he 
implored. “Can’t he—lie in peace—^just for to¬ 
night? I—I’d like to sit with him to-night, sir. 
Surely there’s no harm?” 

“Was he so very kind to you?” said the in¬ 
spector sympathetically. 

Wrenn hesitated. “Mostly he was, sir,” he said at 
last, quite simply. And then he added in a queer, 
forlorn way: “I—I’ve been with him a long time, 
you know, sir.” 

The detectives, despite Wrenn’s protests, searched 
the room with methodical thoroughness. If there 
was one single thing, no bigger than a pin, which 
ought not, in the nature of things, to be in a dress¬ 
ing room of this kind, why, they were there to 
find it. 

“But why?” Dukane whispered to Rarrison. “Not 
that there is the slightest objection—^but what is 
it Lowry expects to find?” 

“He doesn’t,” replied Rarrison. “He’s from 
Missouri; he wants to be shown. We always 
search the premises, you know-” 

“But it wasn’t here he was killed.” 

“No; but it was so near here that- Hello! 

They’ve got something!” 

He spoke in the tone of suppressed excitement 
that a fox hunter might have used. 


128 


THE SEVENTH SHOT 


The plain-clothes man with the inspector had 
opened the trunk, and was staring into it with a 
puzzled face. At the same moment, Wrenn emitted 
a low moan, as though, after a struggle, he found 
himself obliged to give up at last. He staggered 
a trifle, and caught at the back of a chair to steady 
himself. 

“Well,” said the inspector, softly jocose. “Haven’t 
found the murderer in that trunk, have you, Sims?” 

“No, sir,” said the officer; but his voice was as 
puzzled as his eyes. “Only this.” 

He took something out of the trunk, and held 
it up in the unsparing glare of the dressing-room 
lights. It was assuredly an odd sort of article to 
be found in a man’s theater trunk. For it was a 
piece of filmy white stuff, with lace upon it, badly 
torn. 

“A sleeve,” said the inspector, with an obvious 
accent of astonishment. “A woman’s sleeve—let’s 
have a look at it.” 

He took it into his own hands. Clearly, it was 
the sleeve and part of the shoulder of a woman’s 
dress or blouse, trimmed with elaborate, but rather 
coarse and cheap lace. On the front, where it 
had evidently been ripped and torn away from 
the original garment, were finger prints, stamped 
in a brownish red. 

The inspector’s eyes strayed to the dressing table 
with its array of paints and powders. 

“Anything there that will correspond? Barrison, 


129 


IN THE STAR DRESSING ROOM 

take a look, while Sims goes through the rest of 
the trunk.” 

Barrison returned with a jar. 

“It’s holamine,” explained Dukane. “They use 
it for a dark make-up, to suggest tan or sunburn. 
Mortimer would naturally use it in an out-of-door 
part of this sort.” 

“On his hands, too?” 

“Surely on his hands; only amateurs forget the 
hands.” 

“Ah!” said Lowry. “We’ll have the finger prints 
examined and compared with Mortimer’s, though it’s 
scarcely necessary, I imagine. It’s so evident 
that-” 

Wrenn broke in, almost frantically: 

“It’s only a make-up rag, sir! Every one uses 
make-up rags, sir, to wipe the make-up off!” 

“Ah!” said Lowry. “You provided yourself with 
these make-up rags, then?” 

“Yes, sir!” Wrenn spoke eagerly. “I asked the 
chambermaid at the hotel for some old pieces for 
Mr. Mortimer, and-” 

“Wrenn, don’t be a fool,” said Lowry, speaking 
sharply for the first time. “In the first place^ 
unless I am much mistaken—make-up rags are 
used only when the make-up is taken off—right, 
Mr. Dukane?” 

The manager nodded. 

“And then—why, in that case, was this rag so 
precious that you had to shut it up in a trunk. 


130 


THE SEVENTH SHOT 


before it had been used? For I take it that a 
make-up rag doesn’t show just one or two complete 
sets of finger prints when a man gets through with 
it! It must look something like a rag that’s used 
on brasses or an automobile! Also, I see that 
there are two or three cloths already on the 
dressing table.” 

He turned his back on Wrenn, and examined 
the bit of linen that he held, while the other de¬ 
tectives held their breath. 

“This,” he said at last, “was torn from the 
dress of some woman who was in the dressing 
room to-night, at some time after Mortimer was 
made up.” 

He turned to Dukane, with the faintest shrug, 
and said: 

“You know, when I tried to reconstruct the crime 
by putting every one in their places—^the places 
they had occupied at the time of the shooting— 
I was attempting the impossible. For there evi¬ 
dently was some one else here, some one who has 
gone; some one”—his eyes flew suddenly and 
piercingly to Wrenn—“whom this man wishes to 
shield.” 


CHAPTER XII 


THE TWO DOORWAYS 

W HETHER it was strictly correct or not, no 
one was in a position to question, but, any¬ 
way, Inspector Lowry told Sybil finally to go home 
after leaving her address. A lot of skeleton theories 
had come tumbling down with the discovery that 
another and unknown woman had been present 
in Mortimer’s dressing room that night. 

Even Claire McAllister’s testimony—that Miss 
Merivale had told her she sometimes wished she 
could kill their star—fell flat after Sybil’s own 
confession of not only what she had felt, but 
what she had threatened. 

The whole business was, as Barrison could see, 
a sickening one for Inspector Lowry. He had 
fallen down right and left; practically speaking, he 
had nothing left now to work on, out of all his 
ingenious work of reconstruction. 

Only his examination of the two men on guard 
at the doors had brought out anything clear cut, 
anything on which seriously to work. 

First of all, he had questioned Joe Lynch, the 
young fellow whose job it had been to keep 
any one save the detective and the manager from 


132 THE SEVENTH SHOT 

passing either way through the communicating 
door. 

“Your name is Joe Lynch, you say?” 

“Yes, sir. 

“You have already said that you stood there by 
the communicating door during the dark scene. 
Lynch?” 

“Yes, sir. 

“Just there?” 

“As near as I can say, sir, yes. I was close 
up here by the door. My orders was to keep it 
shut except for the detectives or Mr. Dukane.” 

“And did you know why?” 

“Why, how do you mean, sir?” 

“Did you understand why the orders were so 
strict to-night of all nights?” 

“Oh, that. Yes, sir; I knew there’d been some 
talk of Mr. Mortimer being in some sort of 
danger.” 

“Who told you?” 

“Why, I couldn’t say, sir. I don’t rightly know. 
Them things gets about. Anyhow, I knew that; 
and I was, so to speak, sort o’ set on taking care 
of Mr. Mortimer.” 

“Did you like him, then?” 

The young man’s dull eyes opened wide. 

“Me, sir?” he said, in surprise. “I never see 
him to talk to. But I was wanting to do my 
part. Mr. Dukane and Mr. Barrison, too, told me 
I was to look sharp. So I did.” 


THE TWO DOORWAYS 133 

“Ah! You did, eh? You looked sharp, eh?” 

“Yes, sir.” 

“Sure?” 

“Why, yes, sir! Course I did! I—I was keen 
on showing I was as quick as the next.” 

“Ah! How were you going to show that?” 

Young Lynch laughed frankly, yet with a sort 
of embarrassment, too. 

“Well, sir, Mr. Dukane, he offered twenty-five 
dollars either to Mr. Roberts or me if we could 
spot any one trying anything suspicious, or any¬ 
thing.” 

**Ahr The inspector’s laconic monosyllable 
sounded a bit sharper than usual. “So that was 
it! Lynch, you were standing there when you 
heard the shot?” 

“Yes, sir, as near as I can say now, in these 
very tracks.” 

The inspector stood beside him and let his eyes 
move slowly from the big door beside them to the 
little flight of steps where the star had met his 
death. 

“Mighty narrow way to pass,” he murmured, 
half to himself. 

“Sir?” said Lynch respectfully. 

The inspector continued to measure distances with 
his eye. 

“You see,” he said to Lynch, “if you will draw 
a straight line from here where we stand, past the 
angle of the property-room corner to the entrance 


134 THE SEVENTH SHOT 

where Mr. Mortimer was waiting, do you see what 
I mean?” 

Lynch looked obediently where he was directed. 
“No, sir,” he said, after he had looked. 

Lowry sighed gently. “Not much space to pass 
any one, anyway,” he murmured. 

Lynch looked at him, still blankly. 

“Lynch,” said the inspector, “if I were in your 
place, and had a chance of making twenty-five dol¬ 
lars if I caught any one, and while I was on duty 
like this, and heard a shot- 

He paused, not seeming to look at Lynch, but 
really noting every shadow and light that passed 
over his face. 

“If I were, in short, as you had been situated, 
I should have left my post when I heard that shot 
and run forward toward the man I was supposed 
to guard. I think I should have considered it my 
duty.” 

“Would you, indeed, sir?” cried young Lynch 
hopefully. 

The inspector suddenly looked at him and said 
dryly. “So that’s what you did? Suppose you tell 
me all about it. You heard the shot, and-” 

“If you please, sir,” protested the young man 
eagerly and rather unhappily, “it wasn’t the shot; 
leastways, I didn’t know about how many shots 
there’d be. It was the scream. I heard the shots, 
one after the other, and then the scream—a dread¬ 
ful scream, if you please, sir. And, of course, 




THE TWO DOORWAYS 135 

I thought first of all of Mr. Mortimer, and there 
being danger, and—and all that. And I run for¬ 
ward, sir, a few steps, through the dark, wishing 
to be of some use, and- 

“And to get the twenty-five dollars?” 

“Well, sir, that perhaps; of course. I’m not saying 
that wasn’t in the back of my mind. But what I 
was thinking of first was that there was trouble, 
and that I might be needed.” 

“That’s all right; I believe you.” Lowry spoke 
shortly, but not at all unkindly. “The point is 
that, within half a second of the time of the shoot¬ 
ing, you had left this particular point, and run in 
the direction of the shots. In other words. Lynch, 
this door was unguarded.” 

“Unguarded, sir!” Lynch was aghast, and truly 
so. “Unguarded, sir! But I had been at my 
post all the evening! No one had gone in or 
out-” 

“No one had gone in or out during the evening, 
I am absolutely convinced. But, after the murder, 
any one who chanced to be there could have gone 
out. Isn’t that so?” 

“But-” The young guard’s troubled eyes be¬ 

gan to measure the distance between the door and 
the stage steps, just as the detectives had done 
before. 

“Ah!” said Lowry. “You see why I spoke of the 
narrow passage which would have to be traversed. 
It would be very narrow, indeed. Any one who 



136 


THE SEVENTH SHOT 


wanted to get from those steps to the communicating 
door would have to pass you at very close quarters, 
Lynch. And yet—the thing could be done. The 
thing could he done. I have not lived so long 
without learning that it is these unlikely, well-nigh 
impossible things that come off in the smoothest 
way of all. All right. Lynch, Fm obliged to you. 
It’s not your fault. You were a bit overzealous, 
but I don’t think we’ll put you in jail for that. 
However you look at it, you’ve shown us one way 
in which the murderer might have escaped.” 

He turned and crooked his arm in that of Har¬ 
rison. 

^‘Now, we’ll go and interview the stage door¬ 
keeper,” he said. Together he and Barrison at¬ 
tacked old Roberts, who confronted him at the 
entrance with a look of mingled apprehension and 
bravado. His round, flabby face was rather pale, 
and he gave the impression of a weak old child 
trying to act like a brave man, 

“What do you want of me, gentlemen?” he 
demanded, in a tone that broke timidly in spite of 
himself. 

They were both very nice to him. In this case, 
Lowry let Barrison do most of the talking, feeling 
that it was a case that required tact. He stood 
back in thoughtful silence while Jim got around 
the old doorkeeper in his very best and most diplo¬ 
matic style with the result that within five minutes 
poor old Roberts was crumpling up in rather a 


THE TWO DOORWAYS 


137 


piteous fashion, perfectly ready to tell them any¬ 
thing and everything he had ever done, said, or 
heard of. 

“I didn’t mean no harm,” he protested at last, 
with such an attitude of abasement that neither 
Barrison nor, indeed, Lowry had the heart to rub 
it in. “I do hope—oh, I do hope, that you’ll not 
let Mr. Dukane discharge me! I’ve been here a 
good many years, and no one can say as I’ve not 
been faithful. I don’t believe there’s been another 
night in all my life when I’ve left my post.” 

“It would have to be to-night!” murmured Lowry. 

“It would!” agreed Barrison. “Go on, Roberts. 
No one wants to kill you, and I don’t believe there’s 
the least likelihood of your losing your job. Just 
tell us-” 

“You don’t know Mr. Dukane, sir!” Roberts al¬ 
most wept. “He’s strict, sir; very strict! He says a 
thing and you’ve got to do it, no matter what 
happens! I know—^haven’t I been working for him 
for twenty years? And now to be fired and 
out- 

“Who said you were going to be fired? Get along, 
Roberts! Tell us what it was that you did.” 

“I left the stage door, sir,” said Roberts humbly. 

“That we gathered. But why did you leave it, 
and when, and for how long?” 

Roberts sniffed and answered in a small stifled 
voice: 




138 


THE SEVENTH SHOT 


“As to when I left it, sir—it was when Mrs. 
Parry came to ask me get a taxi for Miss Legaye.” 

“Why didn’t you get a taxi, then—^telephone for 
one?” 

“I did, sir. I telephoned two places, but there 
wasn’t a single machine in. The starters all said 
the same thing: It looked like rain, and they 
couldn’t guarantee a taxi for an hour yet. I—I 
like Miss Kitty, sir; she’s always kind to me, and 
I didn’t want her to have to wait, ’specially when 
she was sick, as Mrs. Parry said she was. So, 
when I found I couldn’t get one over the wire, I 
went out into the alley to see if I could see one 
passing.” 

“Weil, that doesn’t seem very awful,” said Barri- 
son, smiling at him. “Did you get one?” 

Poor old Roberts brightened a bit at the kindly in¬ 
flection. 

“I couldn’t see one, sir, not from this door, so I 
went up to the gate at the end of the court, and 
looked up and down the street. And after a minute 
I saw one coming and hailed it, and it stopped. So 
I ran back again; and Miss Legaye was standing 
just outside the stage door, waiting. So I called 
to her ‘All right. Miss Legaye, your taxi’s here!’ 
and went on hack. She passed me, in her red coat, 
about halfway, and I told her I was sorry to have 
kept her waiting. Then I hurried back here.” 

“And you are sure you didn’t pass any one but 
Miss Legaye in the alley, no one coming in?” 


THE TWO DOORWAYS 


139 


The old fellow shook his head. “So far as any 
one going out goes,” he said, “how do I know? My 
eyes are not so young as they were. But coming 
in! Why, I was back here! How could any one 
pass me in the light without my seeing them?” 

“But,” sugested Barrison, “while you were down 
at the street signaling the taxi, some one who had 
been hiding in the alley might have slipped in, 
mightn’t they?” 

Old Roberts hung his head, and his whole heavy 
body expressed dejection. 

“That’s what I keep saying to myself, sir!” he 
whispered. “Not that I think it’s likely—^but—^my 
eyes aren’t what they once were, and suppose the 
murderer was hiding there, and just waiting for a 
chance to get in?” 

“And how long, altogether, were you away?” 
Lowry spoke for the first time. 

“That’s easy, sir. I went out a few minutes 
after Mrs. Parry told me to send for the taxi, and I 
had just come back when Mr. Barrison here came 
out to ask me if I’d seen any one pass.” 

“That was just before the shooting,” Barrison 
said. 

**Before the shooting. And you’re prepared to 
swear, Roberts, that no one came out of the 
theater after that?” 

“I am, sir!” The old man’s eyes, dim as they 
were, left no room for doubt; he was speaking the 
truth. 


140 


THE SEVENTH SHOT 


“All right, Roberts. Fm sure you’ve told the 
truth, and Mr. Dukane shall he told so. I don’t be¬ 
lieve you’ll lose your job. Just the same, I wish 
you hadn’t gone to hunt taxicabs at that particular 
moment.” 

As the two detectives walked away, Lowry said 
under his breath: “We’ve proved that no one left 
the theater by the stage door after the shooting, 
but we’ve proved that they might have done so by 
the communicating door. We’ve proved that Lynch 
was at his post for the whole evening up to the 
shooting, so that no one could have come in by 
that way before then; but, since he left it after¬ 
ward, there is no reason to suppose that that some 
one could not have made their exit that way after 
the crime. In other words, my dear friend and col¬ 
league, while we can’t prove it, we can find a 
perfectly possible way for the murderer to have en¬ 
tered and an equally possible way for him, or her, 
to have departed.” 

“You think that—^whoever it was—came in while 
Roberts was blundering up or down the alley?” 

“I see no other explanation. Rarrison, you are 
not officially under me, but I respect your judg¬ 
ment, and I like your work. I should be obliged 
if you would take on such branches of this case 
as seem to lie in your way. You have been in it 
since—so to speak—its inception. You should have 
a line on many aspects of it that I couldn’t possibly 
get, coming into it as I must, from a purely and 


THE TWO DOORWAYS 


141 


coldly official standpoint. ITl expect you to do your 
darnedest on it, and help me in every way you can. 
Right?” 

“Right, sir.” The young detective’s tone was full 
of ardor. 

“Then good night to you. One moment. Did 
you notice the initial on this pistol, the one you 
picked up?” 

He produced it as he spoke. 

“No,” said Jim. “I didn’t want any one to see 
it, so tucked it away without a look.” 

“Take it along with you,” said Lowry unexpect¬ 
edly. “You may be able to spot the owner.” 

Barrison seized the tiny weapon with avidity; it 
was too dark where they stood for him to see 
clearly, and he said, with open eagerness: 

“What is the initial? That of any of the prin¬ 
cipals in the case?’ 

“Of two of them,” said the inspector, as he turned 
to round a corner. “It’s M. Good night.” 


CHAPTER XIII 


THE INITIAL 

T he inspector’s announcement gave Jim Barri- 
son food for thought. 

Then why had Lowry let Sybil go with no 
further examination? They would have to establish 
next her possession of a weapon, and the fact that 
she was sufficiently practiced in the use of firearms 

to have hers marked with her initial, and- 

But just then he discovered* that it had begun to 
rain at last; big drops heralded the storm that had 
been threatening all the evening. Under the circum¬ 
stances, his library at home would be a pleasanter 
place for speculation than the corner of a street. 
He turned up his coat collar and ran for a Sixth 
Avenue car. As he passed the clock outside a jew¬ 
eler’s shop, he saw that it was ten minutes past one 
o’clock, and suddenly he was conscious that he was 
tired. The evening had been a long one, and hard 
on the nerves. 

He stood on the back platform, and let the rainy 
winds blow about him. His dinner coat was get¬ 
ting noticeably wet, but he wanted to think and 
breathe. How hot the theater had been! The smell 
of a singularly vile cigarette close beside him made 
him turn in a disgusted sort of curiosity to see what 



THE INITIAL 


143 


manner of man could smoke it. It turned out to be 
Willie Coster, who had boarded the car when he 
did. 

“Hello!” said Jim. “Didn’t see you before. I 
thought you left the theater before we did.” 

“I had,” said Willie, puffing deeply on his rank 
weed. “I stopped at the corner to get this.” 

Unblushingly he indicated an object done up in 
brown paper, which he carried under his arm. There 
was not the slightest doubt that it was a bottle of 
quart dimensions. Barrison recalled the legend 
that Coster always got drunk after a first night. 
He could not help smiling at the serious delibera¬ 
tion with which he was going about it. 

“I seel” he said. “Well, it’s been a pretty trying 
time for you, a thing like this, coming on top of all 
your hard work on the piece. I dare say you feel 
the need of something to brace you.” 

Willie shook his head. “That’s a nice way of 
putting it,” he said soberly; “but it won’t wash. 
No, sir; the fact is, I mean to get drunk to-night. 
I never touch anything while I’m working, and 
when my work’s done, I consider I’m entitled to a 
little pleasure.” 

“I see,” Barrison said again. “And does getting 
drunk give you a great deal of pleasure?” 

“Oh, yes!” said Coster gravely. “I’m not a 
drunkard, understand. I don’t go off on bats; that 
wouldn’t give me pleasure. And I can always sober 
up in time for anything special. But I like to go 


144 


THE SEVENTH SHOT 


quietly home like this and drink—well, say, about 
this bottle to-night, and another to-morrow. Then 
ril taper off and quit again. See?” 

“Perfectly. If you have to do it, it seems a very 
sensible method. Look here; is there any particular 
hurry about this systematic debauch of yours?” 

“Hurry? Oh, no, there’s no hurry. Any time 
will do. Why?” 

“Then,” said Barrison, who had an idea, “why not 
come over to my rooms—we’re almost there—and 
have a couple of drinks with me and a bite to eat, 
first? You can go home and get drunk later, you 
know, just as well.” 

“Just as well,” said Willie, with surprising ac¬ 
quiescence. “I don’t want any drinks, thanks, for I 
only drink alone. But now you mention it, I’m 
hungry.” 

Barrison knew that he himself was far too tired 
already to lengthen out this night so preposterously, 
but that idea which had so suddenly come to him 
drove all consideration of fatigue from his mind. 
He was a detective, and thought that in the dim 
distance he could see a shadowy trail. In a weird 
case of this sort, anything was worth a chance. 

At Barrison’s rooms they found a cold supper 
waiting, and Tara asleep in a chair, con¬ 
triving somehow to look dignified even in slumber. 
There is no dignity like that of a superior Japanese 
servant. He even woke up in a dignified manner, 
and prepared to serve supper. But Barrison sent 


THE INITIAL 


145 


him to bed, and sat down to talk to Willie over cold 
chicken and ham, and macedoine salad. The little 
stage manager ate hungrily, hut stubbornly refused 
to drink. He also scorned his host’s expensive 
smokes, preferring his own obnoxious brand. 

“Coster,” said Barrison at last, “I want you to 
tell me what you know of Alan Mortimer.” 

“What I know! He was the yellowest guy in 
some things that ever-” 

“That isn’t just what I meant. I mean—^you’ve 
been with Dukane a long time, haven’t you?” 

“Sure thing. I’ve been with the gov’nor five— 
no, six—^years.” 

“Then you must know how he came to take up 
Mortimer. Where did he discover him first? He’s 
a stranger on Broadway.” 

“Why don’t you ask the gov’nor about it?” de¬ 
manded Willie shrewdly. 

“Well,” Jim was obliged to admit, rather uncom¬ 
fortably, “he’s not the sort of man you feel like 
pumping. Of course, Lowry will get it all out of 
him sooner or later, but I’m curious. And I can’t 
see what objection he could have to your-” 

“Being pumped,” finished Willie. “Maybe not, but 
I don’t really know much about it, anyway.” His 
eyes strayed wistfully to his brown paper package. 
“See here,” he said, “I’m much obliged for the eats, 
but I guess I’ll be trotting along. I’ve got a very 
pressing engagement!’ 

“With John Barleycorn?” laughed Barrison. “Oh, 




146 


THE SEVENTH SHOT 


see here, Willie, what’s the difference? If you 
prefer your whisky to mine, Fll get you a cork¬ 
screw, and you can just as well start here. Eh? 
Make an exception and have a couple of drinks 
with me, like a good sport.” 

He felt slightly ashamed of himself, but he 
prodded his conscience out of the way by telling 
himself that as long as the man was going to get 
drunk anyway, he might just as well- 

Willie hesitated and was lost. The first drink he 
poured out made his host gasp; it nearly filled the 
tumbler. 

“Will you take it straight, man?” he asked, in a 
tone of awe. 

“Certainly I will. I don’t take it for the taste, 
I take it for the effect. The more you take at a 
time, the quicker you get results. What’s the good 
of little dabs of drinks like yours, drowned in soda 
water? When I drink, I drink.” 

“I perceive that you do!” murmured Barrison, and 
watched him swallow the entire contents of the 
glass in three gulps. He choked a bit, and accepted 
a drink of water, then leaned back with an ex¬ 
pression of pure bliss stealing over his face. 

“Gee, that was good!” he whispered joyously. 
“Now I’ll have one more in a minute; that will start 
me off comfortably. Then I’ll go home. You 
know,” he added, with that shrewd glance of his, 
“I’m on to your getting me to tank up here; you 
know I’ll talk more. But I’m blessed if I can make 



THE INITIAL 


147 


out what it is you want to know. If there’s any 
dark mystery going, I’m not in it. But you just 
pump ahead.” 

He poured out another enormous draft. 

“Mortimer used to be in a sort of circus, a wild 
West show, didn’t he?” 

Willie grunted assent between swallows. “It was 
a sort of punk third-class show,” he said. “Never 
played big tinle, just ordinary tanks and wood piles 
out West. They had a string of horses and a few 
cowboys who could do fancy riding; Mortimer was 
one of them. His real name was Morton. The 
gov’nor was waiting to make connections some¬ 
where on his way to the coast, and dropped in to 
see one or two of the stunts. This chap was a sort 
of matinee idol wherever he went, and the gov’nor 
spotted him as a drawing card if he ever happened 
on the right part. You know the gov’nor never for¬ 
gets anything, and never overlooks a bet. He took 
the guy’s name and address, and put him away 
in the back of his head somewhere, the way he al¬ 
ways does. When Carlton came to him with this 
war-play proposition, the gov’noi^ thought of Morton, 
and wrote him. That’s all I know about it.” 

“Was Mortimer married?” 

“Not that I know of. Not likely—or, rather, it’s 
likely he had half a dozen wives!” 

Barrison was disappointed; he had thought it just 
possible—there was the pistol, marked with M, and 
the unknown woman who had been in the dressing 


148 


THE SEVENTH SHOT 


room that night. However, Willie was not proving 
much of a help. Barrison yawned and thought of 
bed. 

“One more question,” he asked suddenly. “What 
was the name of the show?” 

“I don’t remember. Blinkey’s or Blankey’s, or 
something like that. Blinkey’s Daredevils, I think, 
but I’m not sure. Say, you’d better let me go home 
while I can walk.” 

“All right; you go, Willie. Were there any 
women in the show?” 

“A couple, I think—yes, I’m sure there were, be¬ 
cause I remember the gov’nor speaking about a sort 
of riding-and-shooting stunt Mortimer did with some 
girl, a crack shot.” 

Barrison started. Was that the trail, then? 

“Much obliged to you, Willie,” he said carelessly. 
“There wasn’t much to tell, though, was there? 
Why did Dukane keep it all so dark, I wonder? I 
should have thought that would have been good 
advertising, all that cowboy stuff, and the traveling 
show, and the rest of it.” 

“I don’t know why the gov’nor does some things; 
no one does,” said Willie, getting to his feet with 
surprising steadiness, and carefully corking his pre¬ 
cious bottle. “But he’s never given any of that stuff 
to the press agent, and I’ve a notion he doesn’t want 
it made public. I don’t know why, but I’m pretty 
sure he has some reason for keeping it dark. Now 
you know as much about it as I do, and I’d never 


THE INITIAL 149 

have told you as much as that if I hadn’t started in 
here!” 

While he was wrapping up his bottle, with a 
painstaking deliberation which was, as yet, almost 
the only sign of what he had drunk, Barrison drew 
the little pistol from his pocket and laid it on the 
table. It was almost a toy, and mounted in silver 
gilt, a foolish-looking thing to have done such 
deadly harm. The letter was in heavy raised gold, 
a thick, squarely printed M. In the rays of the 
student lamp it glittered merrily, like the decoration 
on some frivolous trinket. 

“Hello!” said Willie Coster, looking dully at it 
from the other side of the table. “So that’s the 
gun that did it? Let’s see the letter.” He swayed 
forward to look closer. 

“It’s an M,” said Barrison. 

“You’re looking at it upside down,” said Willie; 
“or else it’s you that’s drunk and not me. That’s 
a W, man, a W! Good night!” 

He ambled toward the door, bearing his package 
clasped to his breast, and disappeared. 

Barrison seized the pistol and turned it around. 
Willie was right. The initial, seen so, was W! 


CHAPTER XIY 


A TIP—AND AN INVITATION 

J IM BARRISON had scarcely grasped this fact 
when the telephone rang. In the dead silence of 
that hour, half after two in the morning, the shrill 
tinkle had a startling effect. Barrison, his fatigue 
forgotten, sprang to the instrument. 

It was Tony Clay’s voice that came to him. “I 
want to come up for a minute.” 

“Oh, confound you!” ejaculated the detective ir¬ 
ritably. “What do you want at this hour? I’ll have 
to come down and let you in; the place is closed.” 

“I know it is. That’s why I’m calling up. I’m 
in the drug store at the corner, and I’ll be there as 
soon as you can get downstairs. All right?” 

“I suppose so. But I’d like to wring your neck!” 
“Welcome to try, old man, just a bit later. So 
long!” 

Barrison hung up, and tramped downstairs with 
suppressed profanity on his tongue, to let Tony in 
at the front door of the apartment house where he 
roomed. The younger man was already waiting on 
the steps, dripping wet, but whistling softly, rather 
off the key. 

“Come in, you blamed night owl!” growled Bar¬ 
rison, under his breath. “Don’t slam the door. And 
if you haven’t something worth while to tell me, 


A TIP—AND AN INVITATION 151 

after routing me out like this, I’ll wake Tara and 
give him full permission to jujutsu you into Belle¬ 
vue! Come on, and stop whistling.” 

Upstairs, Tony demanded Scotch and cigarettes, 
and took off his wet coat. 

“Heavens! Does that mean you’re intending to 
stay?"' 

“Not permanently,” Tony reassured him sooth¬ 
ingly. “I do manage to arrive at inconvenient times, 
don’t I?” 

“You do, you do! Now what is it?” 

“Well,” said Tony, settling himself in the chair 
recently vacated by Willie Coster. “I’ve been call¬ 
ing on Miss Templeton.” 

Barrison was conscious of a queer little thrill, not 
entirely unpleasant. Truth to tell, he had not been 
able to dismiss a certain vision from his mind, 
through all his practice and professional occupa¬ 
tions. He could see it now, all in a moment, gold 
hair, dark-fringed eyes, marble-white throat and 
arms, and a m_outh that could soften and droop like 
a child’s at the most unexpected moments. 

“She’s out of the case, I suppose you know,” he 
said shortly. “Go ahead, though.” 

“You see,” said Tony, “when you pitched into 
me like that about her giving me the slip, I was 
sort of sore, but I knew you were right, too. So 
I gave you the slip, in my turn, and chased over to 
her hotel. I wasn’t at all sure she’d see me, but I 
thought I’d try it on anyhow, and she sent down 


152 


THE SEVENTH SHOT 


word I was to come up. She wore a kimono thing, 

and looked like an angel-” He paused in fatuous 

reflection. 

“Get on, you young fool!” 

Harrison’s tone was the sharper because he him¬ 
self admired Miss Templeton rather more than was 
wholly consistent with the traditions of a cold¬ 
blooded detective. 

So Tony went on: “She seemed to know that there 
had been something wrong at the theater; that im¬ 
pressed me at once. The moment I came into the 
room, she said: ‘Something has happened to him?’ 
I told her about it, and she just sat for a moment 
or two looking straight in front of her. She looked 
—strange, and awfully white and tired and—sort 
of young. After a while she said: ‘Thank Heaven 
it wasn’t F—just that way. Then she asked some 
questions-” 

“What sort of questions?” interrupted Barrison, 
who was looking at the floor, and had let his ciga¬ 
rette go out. 

“Oh, the usual thing: Who was behind at the 
time, and whether any one was suspected, and—she 
made rather a point of this—^where Miss Legaye was 
when it happened.” 

“I know; she’s always harped on that.” Barrison 
frowned impatiently, yet he was thinking as hard 
as he knew how to think. “Anything else, Tony?” 

“Yes; she asked me to give you this.” 

Tony took a small imsealed envelope out of his 




A TIP—AND AN INVITATION 1S3 

waistcoat pocket and handed it over. “She said it 
was important,” he added; “that’s why I insisted 
on coming in to-night.” 

Barrison read his note, and then looked up. “Do 
you know what this is?” he said. 

The hoy flushed indignantly. “Good heavens, 
Jim!” he exclaimed. “You don’t suppose I read 
other people’s letters? She just gave it to me to 
bring, and I brought it, that’s all.” 

Barrison smiled at him, with a warm feeling 
round his heart “That’s all right, Tony,” he said 
kindly, “and you’re all right, too! You’d better look 
at it.” He held it out 

Tony shook his head. “If there’s anything in it 
you want to tell me, fire ahead!” he said stoutly. 
“I—I haven’t any particular reason for seeing it, you 
know.” 

Barrison understood him, and smiled again. “I’ll 
read it to you, then,” he said, and read: 

“My Dear Mr. Barrison: I have just heard, though 
scarcely with surprise, I admit, of Mr. Mortimer’s death. 
It has shocked me very much, I find, even though it was 
the sort of tragedy that was bound to come sooner or later. 

I cannot pretend complete indifference to it, nor yet in¬ 
difference to the conviction of his murderer. I am going to 
assume that you really want any sort of help, from any 
source, in solving this mystery. Though you refused to help 
me once, I am ready to help you now in whatever way I 
can, and I believe that my help may be worth more than 
you are now prepared to see. I knew Alan Mortimer 


154 


THE SEVENTH SHOT 


rather well; it is possible that I can throw light upon cer¬ 
tain phases in his life of which you are still ignorant. I 
promise nothing, for I do not yet know how valuable my 
testimony may prove. But—will you lunch with me at 
one o’clock to-morrow—or, rather, to-day—^at my hotel? 
And meanwhile, if you will forgive me for reiterating the 
suspicion I once suggested to you, you can hardly do better 
than look up Miss Kitty Legaye, and get her views on the 
murder. Far be it for me to suggest a course of action to 
an expert detective like yourself, but—^if Miss Legaye left 
the theater early, she would hardly be likely to learn of the 
tragedy until she got the morning papers. Don’t you think 
that it would be interesting to forestall them, and yourself 
be the one to break the news to her? Just suppose that you 
found it was not precisely ^news’ after all! 

“If I do not hear from you, I shall expect you for lunch¬ 
eon at one. Sincerely yours, 

“Grace Templeton.” 

Jim Barrison automatically registered the fact that 
the writing was not that of the threatening letters, 
and sat still staring at the sheet after he had read 
it aloud. His brain was in a whirl of excitement. 
The words which he had just read seemed, in the 
very utterance of them, to have taken on a vitality, 
a meaning, that they had not had in the first place. 

One could read such a communication in more 
ways than one; at present he could read it only as a 
curious and inscrutable message, or inspiration. He 
could not have said just why it seemed to him so 
important, so imperative. He only knew that the 
phrases of it, simple as they were, seemed to fill the 


155 


A TIP—AND AN INVITATION 

room and echo from wall to wall. Miss Templeton 
herself might have stood before him; he might have 
been listening to her voice. 

Tony Clay, poor lad, was looking troubled, 
huddled there in the big chair on the other side of 
the table. He had forgotten to finish his whisky and 
soda, and was staring at Barrison in a queer, un¬ 
comfortable way. 

“I say, Jim!” he burst out at last, desperate 
through his shyness. “You’re looking not a bit like 
yourself. What’s the matter? That note doesn’t 
sound so very important, now I hear it, and yet, to 
look at you, one would say you’d received a message 
from the tomb.” 

Barrison laughed. “I haven’t!” he said lightly. 
“But I have received a tip. Just a plain, ordinary, 
every-day sort of tip! And I’m going to follow it, 
too! How much sleep do you need, Tony?” 

Tony considered. “Four will do me,“ he said ju¬ 
dicially. 

“You’ll get five. It’s three o’clock now. At eight 
you’ll be ready for business; at eight thirty we’ll be 
at Miss Kitty Legaye’s door. It may be a pipe 
dream, but I’ve taken kindly to the notion of an¬ 
nouncing the news of Mortimer’s death in person! 
Now tumble in on that couch there, and don’t dare 
to speak again until eight in the morning!” 

As he fell asleep, he was still repeating the preg¬ 
nant words: “Just suppose that you found it was 
not precisely ‘news’ after all!” 


CHAPTER XV 


A MORNING CALL 

M ISS LEGATE lived at a very smart little hotel 
near Fifth Avenue. It was not one of the 
strictly “theatrical” hostelries, since Kitty had al¬ 
ways had leanings toward social correctness. But 
the house was patronized by so many actresses of 
exactly the same predilections that it could not help 
being rim with an indulgent and sagacious under¬ 
standing of their tastes and peculiarities, and might 
almost as well have been one of the just-off-Broad- 
way variety. 

When Barrison and Tony Clay presented them¬ 
selves at the “Golden Arms” at twenty minutes after 
eight in the morning, they found the hotel barely 
awake. The clerk who had just come on duty at 
the desk eyed them with surliness and distate. The 
very electric lights, turned on perforce, because of 
the outrageous dinginess of the morning, seemed to 
glare at them with disfavor. Bell boys looked un¬ 
relentingly cross; a messenger boy was making his 
exit with as much dripping and mud as he could; 
and a departing patron appeared to be becoming 
quarrelsome over a fifteen-cent overcharge. 

“Well?” demanded the clerk. He looked frankly 
ugly; ugly in temper as well as in features. He 


A MORNING CALL 


157 


could see that they were not incoming guests, for 
they had no luggage; and it was too early for callers 
of any reputable type. He put them down as a 
breed suspicious, being unknown, of neither fish nor 
fowl variety. *'WellT' he repeated urgently. 

Barrisbn produced a card. “We would like to see 
Miss Legaye,” he suggested pleasantly. 

As he put down the slip of pasteboard on the desk 
counter, his quick eyes noted a bell boy standing at 
the news stand, taking over an armful of assorted 
morning papers. Obviously, the lad was just going 
up to leave them at the doors of the guests; they 
would have to work quickly, he and Tony, if they 
were to get ahead of them. 

“Miss Legaye,” repeated the clerk. “Miss Legaye. 
Are you guys dippy? Miss Legaye always leaves 
word that she ain’t at home to no one till after 
twelve o’clock. Now beat it!” 

Barrison sized up the clerk, and decided on his 
course. 

“Say, brother,” he murmured, with a confidential 
accent, “we don’t mean to annoy Miss Legaye; we 
want to give her a boost. Get me? We’re reporters, 
and we’re looking for a first-class story. Say, take 
it from me, she’ll be keen to see us if you’ll just 
phone up!” 

The slang won his case. The clerk looked at him 
with more respect. 

“Say, you’re talking almost like a human being! 
he remarked. “Want me to phone up for you, eh?’ 


158 


THE SEVENTH SHOT 


He waited a perceptible space. “Times is hard,” he 
declared, in an airy manner, “and phone calls is 
high. Did I hear you say anything?” 

“Maybe not me,” said Barrison, who had laid a 
dollar bill on the desk. “But Fve known money to 
talk before now.” 

The clerk actually chuckled. “You’re on,” he 
said, pocketing the bill with a discreet look around 
the almost deserted office. “I’ll phone up!” 

He turned around a minute later to inform Barri¬ 
son that Miss Legaye would see him at once. 

A few minutes later they were knocking at the 
door of Kitty Legaye’s apartment. Resting against 
the lintel were half a dozen morning papers; clearly 
she had ordered them ahead, in the expectation of 
criticisms of the first night. The indefatigable bell 
boy had been ahead of them, but there was still time 
to rectify that. 

The boy who had piloted them had vanished. 
Barrison picked up the whole bundle, and gave them 
a vigorous swing down the corridor. This had 
barely been accomplished when the door opened, 
and an impeccably attired lady’s maid asked them to 
please come in; Miss Legaye would see them in 
a moment. 

Kitty’s parlor was like Kitty herself, discreet, yet 
subtly daring; conventional, yet alluring. She had 
made short work of the regulation hotel furnishings, 
and replaced them with trifles of her own, which 


A MORNING CALL 159 

gave the place a dainty and audacious air calculated 
to pique the interest of almost anybody. 

One of the modern dark chintzes had been chosen 
by the little lady for her curtains and furniture 
coverings; she also had dared to put cushions of 
cherry color and of black on the chaise longue, and 
futurist posters in vivid oranges and greens upon 
the innocuous drab wall paper. The extreme 
touches had been made delicately, without vulgarity. 
Barrison, who had rather good taste himself, smiled 
as he read in this butterflylike audacity a sort of 
key to little Miss Kitty’s own personality. 

She came in almost immediately, and, though Jim 
had never admired her, he was forced to admit to 
himself at that moment that she was very charming 
and quite appealing. 

The creamy pallor which was always so effective 
an asset of hers seemed a bit etherealized this morn¬ 
ing, whether by a sleepless night or the gray, rainy 
light. Her dark hair was pulled straight back from 
her small face, with a rather sweet absence of 
coquetry; or was it, instead, the very quintessence 
of coquetry, brought to a fine art? Her big brown 
eyes were bigger and browner than ever, and her 
slim, almost childish little figure—^which looked so 
adorable always in its young-girl frocks before the 
footlights—looked incomparably adorable in a 
straight, severely cut little white wrapper, like the 
robe of an early martyr. 


160 


THE SEVENTH SHOT 


She came forward to meet them quickly, but 
quite without embarrassment. 

“Mr. Barrison!” she exclaimed, rather breath¬ 
lessly. “What is it? Of course I said I would see 
you at once. I knew you wouldn’t come without 
some good reason. What do you want of me?” 

Her eyes were as clear as the brown pools in a 
spring brook, and Barrison felt suddenly ashamed 
of himself and—almost—wroth with Grace Temple¬ 
ton for putting him up to this. 

“Miss Legaye,” he said, with some hesitation, “I 
am already calling myself all sorts of names for 
having aroused you at this unearthly hour. And 
you were not well, too.” 

“Oh, that headache!’ she said. “That is all gone 
now! I got to bed early, and had a really decent 
sleep for once, so I am in good shape this morn¬ 
ing! But—what did you want to see me about?” 

Just as Barrison was trying to find words in 
which to answer her properly, the maid spoke from 
the doorway: 

“You told me to take in the papers, miss, but 
there’s none there.” 

Kitty turned in astonishment. “Not there! But 
they always leave them at eight, and I particularly 
said that I wanted all of them this morning. That’s 
funny! Never mind; you can go down to the stand 
and get them, and Mr. Barrison can tell me what I 
want to know first of all. Oh, Mr. Barrison, tell me 
about last night! Did it all go off as well as it 


A MORNING CALL 161 

seeemd to be going when I left?” She looked with 
honest eagerness into his eyes. 

Barrison felt most uncomfortable, but he forced 
himself to say steadily: “Have you really not heard 
anything about what happened last night, Miss 
Legaye?” 

If it were possible to turn paler, she turned paler 
then; and her eyes seemed to darken, as though with 
dread; yet there was nothing in her look but what 
might come from honest fear of the imknown. 

“Mr. Barrison! What is it that you are trying to 
make me think? What do you mean? Oh —ohr 
She drew in her breath sharply. “Is that what it 
means? Is that what you came here for—^to—^tell 
me something? Is that it, Mr. Barrison?” 

Her eyes pleaded with him, looking earnestly out 
of her little white face. She looked a butterfly no 
longer; rather, a tired and frightened little girl. 
“Won’t you tell me what it all means?” she begged. 

“Miss Legaye,” Jim said gently, “there was a 
tragedy last night at the theater after you left.” 

“A tragedy?” 

“Yes; there was—a murder.” 

She stared at him, as though she did not yet 
understand. “A murder?” 

“Miss Legaye, I see it is a shock to you, but you 
must hear it from some one; you might as well 
hear it from me. Mr. Mortimer was shot last night 
during the last act, and is dead.” 

She shrieked—a thin, high, deadly shriek, which 


162 


THE SEVENTH SHOT 


rang long in the ears of the two men. Her face 
grew smaller, sharper; she beat the air with her 
hands. The maid ran to her. 

News? Oh, Heaven, yes! There was no question 
of this being news to her; it was news that was 
coming close to killing her. 

“Say that again!” she managed to say, in a slow, 
thick utterance that sounded immeasurably strange 
from her lips. “Alan Mortimer was murdered? 
You said that? You are sure of it?” 

“Yes, Miss Legaye.” 

She flung up her hands wildly, and fainted dead 
away. 


CHAPTER XVI 


A SCARLET EVENING COAT 

TT was a real faint. They had a good hit of diffi- 
^ culty in getting her out of it. 

There wasn’t much room in Jim Barrison’s mind 
for anything except self-reproach. He knew that 
the tidings of Mortimer’s murder had come upon 
Kitty Legaye like a stroke of lightning. She had 
no more been prepared for it than she would have 
been prepared for the end of the world. He had 
an idea that the end of the world would, as a gen¬ 
eral proposition, have affected her much less. Bar- 
rison was no new hand, and not too soft-hearted or 
gullible; and he knew that what he had looked upon 
that morning was sheer, absolute shock and grief, 
unlooked for, terrible, devastating. 

Poor little Kitty, with all her frivolities, had big¬ 
ness in her. As she struggled back into the gray 
world, she obviously tried to straighten up and 
steady herself. The terror was all the time at the 
back of her brown eyes, but she was doing her best 
to be game, to be, as she herself would have ex¬ 
pressed it, “a good sport.” 

Of course, she wanted particulars, and he gave 
them to her, feeling like a pickpocket all the time. 
Papers were obtained, and she was induced to take 
coffee with brandy in it, and—at last—she broke 


164 


THE SEVENTH SHOT 


down and cried, which was what every one had 
been praying for since the beginning. 

Probably never in his clear-cut, well-established 
career had Jim Barrison experienced what he was 
experiencing now: The sense that he had brought 
unnecessary suffering upon an innocent person, and 
brought it in a peculiarly merciless and unsports¬ 
manlike way. He felt savage when he thought of 
that “tip” of Miss Templeton’s—or did he, really? 
He was obliged to confess to himself that, where she 
was concerned, he would be almost sure to discover 
approximately extenuating circumstances! 

It was partly to soothe his own aching conscience 
that Jim forced himself to ask a few perfunctory 
questions. 

“You don’t mind?” he asked Kitty. 

“Naturally I don’t,” she said, trying not to cry, 
and choking down coffee. “You’ve been awfully 
kind, Mr. Barrison. If there’s anything I can do to 
help, please let me. You know”—she looked at him 
in a sudden, piteous way—“I had expected to marry 
Mr. Mortimer. Maybe you can guess what all this 
means to me? Will you tell me what you wanted 
to know?” 

“For one thing,” he said, “we want to establish 
as nearly as we can when the murderer—the mur¬ 
deress, as we think it was—entered the theater. 
Old Roberts says that he went out through the 
alley to the street to get you a taxi- 

“Dear old thing!” she whispered. 



A SCARLET EVENING COAT 165 

Yes; he is a nice old sort. He made it very clear 
that it was only his devotion to you that induced 
him to leave his post. Well, it seems almost certain 
that some one passed him, and perhaps you, in the 
alley last night. You don’t remember seeing even a 
shadow that might he suspicious?” 

She shook her head thoughtfully. 

“No, I don’t,” she said. “But I was in a hurry, 
and wasn’t looking out for anything of that sort. 
Roberts knows I was in a hurry?” She spoke 
quickly. 

“Oh, yes. He says you were in a hurry, and not 
feeling well. The point is, did you see anything at 
all on your way to the taxi ?” 

“Nothing. I was only thinking of getting home 
and to bed; it had been a horrid evening.” 

Now, of course, the obvious thing for Jim Barri- 
son to do then was to take his leave. More, it was 
manifestly the only decent thing for him to do. He 
had proved conclusively that Kitty had not ex¬ 
pected the news of Mortimer’s murder; in addition, 
she had declared that she had noticed no one on 
her way out to the taxi the night before. On the 
face of it, there was nothing further to be found out 
here. And yet, after he had got to his feet and taken 
up his hat, he lingered. As a matter of fact, he 
never was able, in looking back afterward, to tell 
just what insane impulse made him blurt out sud¬ 
denly : 

“Miss Legaye, you were wearing a red wrap last 


166 


THE SEVENTH SHOT 


night, weren’t you? Something quite bright, 
scarlet?” 

She looked up at him faintly surprised. “Why, 
yes,” she answered, “you saw it yourself, just as I 
was going out.” 

Jim hesitated, and then said something still more 
crazy: “Would you—do you very much mind letting 
me see it—^now?” 

She stared at him in undisguised astonishment. 
“Certainly,” she said, rather blankly. “Celine, will 
you bring my red evening coat, please?” 

The maid did so at once; it flamed there in the 
gray light of that rainy morning like some mon¬ 
strous scarlet poppy. Barrison lifted a shimmering, 
brilliant fold, and looked at it. 

“It’s a gorgeous color 1” he said, rather irrel¬ 
evantly. 

“Scarlet!” whispered Kitty, in a strange tone. 
“And to think I was wearing that last night. I do 
not believe that I shall ever feel like wearing scarlet 
again! You are going, Mr. Barrison?” 

“Yes; you have been very patient with me, and 
very forgiving for having been the bearer of such 
bad news. Good-by. I won’t even try to express 
the sympathy-” 

“Don’t; I understand. Mr. Barrison, why did you 
want to see this coat?” 

“It was just an impulse!” he declared quickly. 
“You forgive me for that, too?” 



A SCARLET EVENING COAT 167 

She bent her head without speaking, and the two 
men went away. 

“Tony,” said Jim Barrison, when they were in the 
street once more, facing the wet blast, “it’s no lie 
to say that facts are misleading.” 

“It’s no lie to say they very often mislead your 
retorted Tony, somewhat acidly. He felt the loss 
of sleep more and more, and was fretful. Also, 
he was hungry. “What wild-goose chase are you 
off on now?” 

“None; I’m going round in circles.” 

“You said it!” 

“It’s a fact,” continued Barrison, unheeding, 
“that the little woman back there was genuinely 
shocked and upset by hearing of Mortimer’s death.” 

“Rather!” 

“But it is also a fact—also a fact, Tony—that 
that evening coat of hers is damp this morning, and 
it didn’t begin to rain till after midnight!” 


CHAPTER XYH 


BLIND TRAILS 

M ind you,” Barrison went on hastily, “there are 
a hundred explanations of a thing like that; it 
isn’t, strictly speaking, evidence at all. Only—I 
couldn’t help noticing! Now, Tony, I want you to go 
home and go to bed—see?” 

“It’s lucky you do!” said Tony. 

“Shut up! Go to bed and sleep your fool head off; 
and then—get back there to the Golden Arms, and 
find out who saw Miss Legaye come in last night; 
what time it was, whether she seemed excited, and 
—what she wore! That last is the most important. 
Make up to the maid. You can bribe, torture, or 
make love to her; I don’t care which. Only find out 
everything you can. Get me?” 

Tony grunted, and departed. 

Jim turned his face toward Forty-fourth Street. 
He knew that John Carlton usually breakfasted at 
the Lambs’ Club, and he needed his help. Also, he 
thought tenderly of the prospect of a mixed grill. 
Barrison could get along with very little sleep, when 
he was on a case, but he had to have food. Carl¬ 
ton was at breastfast, devouring, with about equally 
divided attention, bacon and eggs and the morning 
papers. He welcomed Jim with much excitement 
and a flood of slang. 


BLIND TRAILS 


169 


“Well, what do you know about this, Barrison? 
I can’t seem to get a line on myself to-day. Am I 
the whole cheese, or am I an also ran? Do I stack 
up as the one best bet, or do I crawl into a hole 
and pull the hole in after me? Sit down!” 

“Talk English!” suggested Barrison good-natured¬ 
ly as he obeyed. “Order me some breakfast, first, 
and then tell me what you’re talking about.” 

Carlton, having with difficulty been prevented 
from ordering a meal adequate to the needs of a 
regiment on march, condescended to translate his 
emotions. 

“You see, it’s this way,” he explained, munching 
toast and marmalade. “That poor guy going out 
like that—I never liked him, but it was a rotten 
way to finish, and I’d like to broil whoever did it 
alive—leaves me, so to speak, guessing. My play is 
off, for the present anyway, and I’ve been spending 
my royalties already. On the other hand. I’m get¬ 
ting some simply priceless advertising! Everybody 
will be after me, I guess, and all the beautiful lead¬ 
ing men will he thirsting to play the part in which 
poor Mortimer achieved eternal fame by getting 
killed. I may sound flippant, but I’m not; it’s the 
only way I can express myself—except on paper! 
Now, where do I get off? Am I a racing car or a 
flivver?” 

“You’ll probably find out soon enough,” Jim told 
him. “Meanwhile, I want your help.” 

“Nothing doing!” said Carlton energetically. 


170 


THE SEVENTH SHOT 


“Meanwhile, I want yours! I can live just long 
enough for you to drink that cup of coffee with¬ 
out talking, hut after that it’s only a matter of sec¬ 
onds before I cash in, if you don’t tell me everything 
that happened last night. Beastly of you and the 
governor not to let me back, so I could he in on 
what was doing.” 

Barrison told him what had happened. He was 
not too completely communicative, however; he 
liked the playwright, and had no reason to distrust 
him, but he knew that this case was likely to be 
a big one, and a hard one, and he had no mind 
to take outsiders into his confidence unless it was 
strictly necessary. 

“And now,” he said, “I’ve done my part, and, I 
hope, saved you from an early grave shared by the 
cat who died of curiosity. Come across, and do 
yours 1” 

Carlton grinned. “Talking slang so as to make 
yourself intelligible to my inferior intelligence? All 
right; fire away! What can I do for you?” 

Barrison told him that he wanted to find out about 
a wild West show called by the name of its man¬ 
ager, Blinkey or Blankey. 

Carlton scowled at him wonderingly. “Now, what 
sort of a game’s that?” he demanded. “What has a 
wild West show to do with my perfectly good 
play-” 

“Never mind. Can you find out for me?” 

The writer shook his head. 



BLIND TRAILS 


171 


“Not in a million years. I don’t know anything 
about the profession except where it happens to hit 
me. Why don’t you tackle the governor? He knows 
everything and everybody.” 

“I may yet. But it isn’t anytliing that really con¬ 
cerns him. And I don’t imagine he’s very cheery 
this morning.” 

“I believe that little thing! It’s beastly hard 
lines for him! Tell you what I’ll do, Barrison. I’ll 
give you a card to Ted Lucas. He’s a decent sort of 
chap, on the dramatic department of the New York 
Blaze, If he can’t help you, maybe there’ll be 
some one in his office who can.” 

“Thanks. That’s just what I want.” 

Armed with the card, Barrison said good-by and 
departed. He met two or three men whom he knew 
on his way out. One and all were talking about 
the murder. He was not known to have any con¬ 
nection with the case, so he escaped being held up 
for particulars, but he heard enough to show him 
that this was going to be the sensation of the whole 
theatrical world. 

It was not yet ten o’clock, and Dukane would 
not be in his office, so he went downtown to hunt 
up Ted Lucas in the roaring offices of the Blaze, 

He had to wait a bit, with the deafening clatter 
of typewriters, and the jangle of telephones beating 
about his ears. Then a keen-faced but very quiet 
young man rather foppishly dressed, and with 


172 


THE SEVENTH SHOT 


sleek hair which looked as though it had been 
applied with a paint brush, appeared. 

“I’m Lucas,” he explained politely. “Wanted to 
see me?” 

Barrison knew reporters pretty well, and this 
one was typical. The detective wasted as few 
words as possible, hut stated what he was after. 
Lucas shook his head doubtfully. 

“Never heard of any such show,” he said. “I’ll 
have a look at the files, though. My chief is 
rather a shark for keeping records of past per¬ 
formances. Will you look in a hit later—or phone?” 

“I’ll phone,” said Barrison, preparing to leave. 
He had not expected any rapid results, yet he felt 
vaguely disappointed. Or was it because he was 
tired? “See here,” he said impulsively. “You 
cover a lot of theatrical assignments, don’t you?” 

“Quite a lot,” said the reporter indifferently, 
eying him. 

“Isn’t there anything playing here in town now 
with a—a wild West feature? Anything that in¬ 
cludes a shooting stunt, or cowboy atmosphere, or 
—or that?” 

Barrison could not help clinging to that faint 
clew concerning Mortimer’s connection with the 
“daredevil” outfit, out West. 

Ted Lucas considered. “Why, no,” he said. “I 
don’t know of any. You wouldn’t mean a single 
act, like Bitz the Daredevil, would you?” 

“Ritz the Daredevil!” Barrison leaped at the 


BLIND TRAILS 


173 


name. Of course, it might he nonsense, but there 
was something that looked like just the shadow 
of a coincidence. “Who is she?” 

Just a crack shot, a girl who plays at a bum 
vaudeville theater this week. I don’t know why she 
calls herself a ‘daredevil.’ It isn’t such a daring 
stunt to shoot at a target. But she’s clever with a 
gun, I understand. I’m to ‘cover’ her act to-night.” 

Barrison thought quickly. It was only the ghost 
of a trail, but- 

“You’re going to see her to-night?” 

“Yes. Going to see the show from the front 
and interview her afterward. She’s through with 
her stimt, I hear, about nine thirty. It isn’t a usual 
thing, but Coyne—^who owns the theater—has a 
bit of a pull with us; advertising, you know; and 
we usually give one of his acts a write-up every 
week.” 

“Might I come along?” 

“You? Sure thing! But I warn you, it’ll be 
an awful thing! It’s one of those continuous affairs. 
Well, have it your own way. If you’ll meet me 
at the theater, I can get you in on my pass. 
Eight?” 

“Eight it is.” 

Barrison waited for directions as to the where¬ 
abouts of Coyne’s Music Hall, of which he had 
never heard, and took his departure. He went 
into a telephone booth to call up Lowry, but found 
that the inspector would not be at his office until 



174 


THE SEVENTH SHOT 


the afternoon. Then he went uptown again, and, 
taking a deep breath and a big brace with it, 
went to call on Max Dukane. 

He had no real reason for dreading an interview 
with him; the manager had always been most 
courteous to him. Yet he did feel a shade of 
apprehension. Something told him that the Dukane 
of yesterday would not be quite the Dukane of 
to-day. And it wasn’t only the tragedy which had 
brought him so much financial loss which was to 
be considered. Ever since Willie Coster had inti¬ 
mated that Dukane had a secret reason for keeping 
dark the conditions under which he had come across 
Mortimer, Barrison had felt uneasy in regard to 
him. He had always recognized in the manager a 
man of immense power and authority. If he had 
a sufficient reason, he could guess that he would be 
immensely unscrupulous as well. 

However, at a little after half past eleven o’clock, 
he presented himself at the great man’s office. 

This time, though there were half a dozen people 
ahead of him, he did not have to wait at all. The 
fact surprised him, but when he had been admitted 
to Dukane’s presence, he understood it better. He 
had been thus speedily summoned in order to be 
the more speedily dismissed. 

“Hello, Barrison,” said Dukane crisply. “Anything 
I can do for you?” 

He sat at his desk like an iron image; his face 
was hard and cold. He did not look so much 


BLIND TRAILS 


175 


angry as stern. It was clear that, in his own stony 
fashion, he had flung yesterday into the discard, 
and was not any too pleased to be reminded of it. 

Barrison was not asked to sit down, so stood 
by the desk, feeling rather like a small boy re¬ 
porting to his teacher. 

“Yes, Mr. Dukane,” he said quietly, “there is. 
I’ve come about the case.” 

“Case?” 

“The murder of Alan Mortimer.” 

Dukane raised his heavy eyebrows. “I am not 
interested in it.” 

“Mr. Dukane, I can scarcely believe that. Mor¬ 
timer was your star, under your management; I 
should imagine that the disaster to him must con¬ 
cern you very closely.” 

Dukane laid down a paper cutter which he had 
been holding in his hand. 

“Concern me?” he said, in a hard, disagreeable 
tone. “Yes, it does concern me. It concerns me 
to the tune of several thousands of dollars. The 
part was especially worked up for him; there is no 
one available to take it at a moment’s notice. But 
there my concern begins and ends. So far as his 
murderer goes-” 

“Yes, that is what we are chiefly interested in.” 

“/ am not interested in it. Mortimer was an 
investment, so far as I was concerned. It is an 
investment which has failed. I have other things 



176 


THE SEVENTH SHOT 


to think of that seem to me more important—and 
more profitable.” 

“But you engaged me, professionally, to-” 

“You will receive your check.” 

Barrison flushed indignantly. “Mr. Dukane! You 
cannot think I meant that. But if you were suffi¬ 
ciently interested to engage me- 

Dukane raised his hand and stopped him. “Bar¬ 
rison,” he said, in short, clear-cut accents, “let us 
understand each other. I engaged you to keep Alan 
Mortimer alive. Alive, he was worth a good deal 
to me. Dead, he is worth nothing. I was perfectly 
willing to pay to protect my property; but having 
lost it, I wash my hands of the matter.” 

“Don’t you really want to see his murderer 
brought to justice?” 

“I really care nothing about it.” 

“Then you are not even willing to help the au¬ 
thorities ?” 

“Help?” The manager raised his head haughtily, 
and stared at him with cold eyes. “What have I to 
do with it? What should I have to say that could 
help?” 

“You might tell us something about Mr. Mor¬ 
timer’s life—something that could point toward a 
possible enemy. You know as well as I do that 
when a man dies under such circumstances, it 
is necessary for the officers engaged on the case 
to know as much of his life and antecedents as 
possible. In this case, no one seems to know any- 




BLIND TRAILS 


177 


thing except you, Mr. Dukane. That’s why I am 
obliged to come to you.” 

“I know nothing about his life, nor about his 
antecedents. I picked him up in a Western town, 
stranded, after his show had gone to pieces.” 

“What was the name of the show?” 

“I haven’t the faintest idea. Now, if you will 
be good enough to let me get on with my morning’s 
business- 

“I shall certainly do so,” said Barrison quietly, 
as he turned away. “But I must warn you, Mr. 
Dukane, that I believe you are making a mistake. 
The detective force will find out what they have to 
find out. If you have any reason- 

“Reason?” 

“I say, if you have any reason for wanting them 
not to do so, you would do much better to forestall 
them, and give them your help frankly to begin 
with.” 

“Is that all?” 

“That is quite all, Mr. Dukane.” 

“Very well, Barrison. As I say, you will receive 
your check in due time. Barrison- 

The detective turned at the door, and waited for 
him to go on. Dukane was sitting with his head 
somewhat bent; after a moment he lifted it, and 
said, in a gentler tone than he had used before 
during the interview: 

“I have given you the impression of being a 
hard man. It is a truthful impression; I am a hard 




178 


THE SEVENTH SHOT 


man. I should not he where I am to-day, had I 
not been hard, very hard. But if I have spoken 
to you with bitterness, you will remember, please, 
that I feel no bitterness toward you. I like you, 
on the contrary. But in my life there is no place 
for individual likes or dislikes. Long ago, I decided 
to play a great game for great stakes. I have won 
at that game; I shall continue to win. Nothing else 
counts with me; nothing! That is all. Good-by, 
Barrison I” 

“Good-hy, sir,” the younger man said, and went 
out of the big, rich, inner office, where even the 
noise and hustle of the world came softly, lest 
anything disturb the imperious brain brooding and 
planning at the desk. 

It was in a very sober mood that Barrison reached 
Miss Templeton’s hotel at luncheon time, and sent 
up his card. 


CHAPTER XVIII 


MISS TEMPLETON AT HOME 

T THOUGHT you’d just as lief have lunch up 
here,” said Miss Templeton. 

Barrison looked at her as though he had never 
seen her before. Indeed, he was not sure that he 
ever had. 

It is an experience not unknown to most of us, 
that of finding ourselves confronting some one or 
something long familiar, as we thought, but pre¬ 
sented all at once in a new guise. From the first, 
Jim had felt in Miss Templeton a personality deeper 
and truer than would be superficially descried 
through her paint and powder and conspicuous 
dresses. But, so far, his idea of her had had to 
be more or less theoretical and instinctive; he had 
not had very much to go by. 

To-day, and for the first time, he saw in the 
flesh the woman whom he had half unconsciously 
idealized in the spirit: a very sweet, rather shy 
woman, whose starry eyes and clear skin looked 
the more strikingly lovely for being, to-day, un¬ 
assisted by artifice. 

She wore a nunlike gray frock, and her splendid 
gold hair was simply arranged. It would be hard 
to imagine a greater contrast than that which she 


180 


THE SEVENTH SHOT 


presented with the Woman in Purple of but a 
brief fortnight ago. 

Her parlor was a further surprise. Unconsciously, 
he found himself remembering Kitty Legaye’s 
dainty and bizarre apartment, and comparing the 
two. Who would have dreamed that it was in 
such surroundings as these that this woman would 
choose to live? 

She had not, like Kitty, transformed her apart¬ 
ment with stuffs and ornamentations. Her individ¬ 
uality had somehow transfused itself through every¬ 
thing, superior to trappings or furnishings. She 
had left the room very much as it must have been 
when she took it. The curtains and the carpets 
were the same that the hotel manager had put 
there; but they seemed somehow of secondary im¬ 
portance. On that drab regulation background she 
had contrived to paint herself and what she lived 
for in colors that were, while subdued, unmis¬ 
takable. No one could enter there without know¬ 
ing that he was in the sanctum of a personality. 

First and foremost, there were books; books on 
shelves, on the table, books everywhere. And they 
were not best sellers either, if one could judge by 
their plain heavy bindings. 

“Italian history,” she said, seeing him glance 
curiously at a title. “I take up wild fads from 
time to time, and read about nothing else until the 
subject is exhausted, or until I am! At present I 
spend my time in the company of the Medici !” 


MISS TEMPLETON AT HOME 


181 


He thought that she was the last woman on 
earth whom he would expect to care for such things, 
but that was to be the least of his surprises. All 
her books sounded one persistent note, romance, 
adventure, a passionate love for and yearning after 
the beautiful, the thrilling, the emotional in life. 
There were books of folklore and legends, medieval 
tales and modern essays on strange, far lands more 
full of color and wonder than ours. There were 
translations from different tongues, there were vol¬ 
umes full of Eastern myths, and others of sea 
tales and stories of the vast prairies and the Bar¬ 
bary Coast. There was not a single popular novel 
among them all. Every one was a treasure box 
of romance. 

The pictures which she had collected to adorn 
her rooms were equally self-revealing. They ranged 
from photographs and engravings to Japanese 
prints; more than one looked as though it had 
come from a colored supplement. Here, again, the 
message was invariably adventurous or romantic. 

Miss Templeton smiled as she saw her guest’s 
bewildered look. 

“It’s a queer assortment, isn’t it?” she said. 
“But I can’t stand the flat, polite-looking things 
that people pretend to admire. Things have to be 
alive, to call me, somehow!” 

All at once, it seemed to Jim that he had the 
keynote to her character. It was vitality. She was 


182 


THE SEVENTH SHOT 


superbly alive—with the vivid faults as well as the 
vivid advantages of intense life. 

Luncheon was served at once, and it proved al¬ 
most as cosmopolitan in its items as the rest of 
Miss Templeton’s appurtenances. She had ordered 
soft-shell crabs to begin with, because she said 
that for the first twenty-five years of her life 
she had never had a chance to taste them, and 
now, since she could, she was making up for lost 
time, and ate them every day! With truly feminine 
logic, she had made her next course broiled ham 
and green corn, because she had been brought up 
on them in the Middle West. She had a new 
kind of salad she had recently heard of, solely 
because it was new; and she finished with chocolate 
ice cream for the reason, as she explained, that 
chocolate ice cream had always been her idea of 
a party, and when she wanted to feel very grand, 
she made a point of having it. 

Barrison was no fool where women were con¬ 
cerned; he knew that she was purposely making 
herself attractive to him, and he knew that she 
was sufficiently fascinating to be dangerous. Her 
unexpectedness alone would make her interesting 
to a man of his type. But he could usually keep 
his head; he proposed to keep it now. So far as 
playing the game went, he was not altogether a 
bad hand at it himself, and Miss Templeton, he im¬ 
agined, was not precisely a young or unsophisticated 


MISS TEMPLETON AT HOME 183 

vOlage maid. That there was danger merely made 
it the more exhilarating. 

“Mr. Barrison,” she said at last, “of course you 
are asking yourself what it is that I have to tell 
you—why, in short, I asked you to lunch to-day.” 

“I am asking myself nothing at the present mo¬ 
ment,” he returned promptly, “except why, by the 
favor of the gods, I should be playing in such 
extraordinary luck! But, of course, Fll be inter¬ 
ested in anything you have to tell me.” 

“Yes,” she said slowly. “I think you probably 
will be interested. You’ll forgive me if I begin 
with a little—a very little—personal history? It 
won’t be the ‘story of my life,’ don’t be frightened! 
But it’s essential to what I want to tell you after¬ 
ward.” 

“Please tell me anything and everything you care 
to,” he begged her, with the air of grave attention 
which a woman always delights to see in a man 
to whom she is speaking. 

She sat, her chin resting on her clasped hands; 
her eyes abstracted, fixed on nothing tangible that 
he could see, as she spoke: 

“You understand me a little better now, seeing 
me at home—in as much of a home as I can have 
—among the books and pictures that I love, don’t 
you? Never mind; perhaps you don’t. Though I 
don’t think I’m very hard to understand. I’m just 
a woman who’s always been hunting for something 
that- 


184 


THE SEVENTH SHOT 


“The Blue Bird of Happiness?” he suggested 
gently. “You’ve read it, of course?” 

“Naturally—and loved it. But—I don’t imagine 
that / could ever find my Blue Bird at home, as 
they did. It would have to be in some very far 
place. I’m sure, only to be won after tremendous 
effort!” 

“After all, that Blue Bird they found at home 
flew away as soon as it was found!” he reminded 
her. “I can see that you hear the call of adventure 
more clearly than most people. Have you always 
dreamed of the ‘strange roads?’ Or has it been a 
part of—growing up?” 

“You were going to say ‘growing older!”’ she 
said, with a faint smile. “I think I’ve always been 
so. I seem always to have been struggling away 
from where I was—^rotten, discontented nature, 
isn’t it? Will you hand me those cigarettes, 
please?” 

Barrison proffered his own case, and she took and 
lighted one with a grave, almost a dreamy air. “You 
see,” she said, “I was brought up in a deadly little 
Illinois town. While I was still practically a baby, 
I got married. He was a vaudeville performer, 
and to me quite a glorious personage. The girls 
I knew thought so, too. He was better looking 
than any drummer who’d been there, and had 
better manners than the clerk at the drug store, 
who was the village beau.” 

She spoke calmly, without sentiment, yet she did 


MISS TEMPLETON AT HOME 185 

not sound cynical; her manner was too simple for 
that. 

Well, I didn t find the Blue Bird thovc. I found 
nothing in that marriage with a glimmer of happi¬ 
ness in it, until I came in sight of the divorce 
court. That looked to me like the gate of heaven! 
Then I went into the movies.” 

“The movies! I never knew that.” 

“No, of course not. No one knows it. It’s all 
right to advertise leaving the legitimate stage for 
the screen; hut if you’ve come the other way, and 
graduated from the screen to the stage, you’re not 
nearly so likely to tell the press man. Anyway, 
I was in an old-style picture company—I’m talk¬ 
ing about six years ago—that was working on 
some hlood-and-thunder short reels out in Arizona, 
when they hired a hunch of professional cow- 
punchers for some rough Western stuff in a fea¬ 
ture picture. Alan Mortimer was one of them.” 

“Alan Mortimer!” 

“Yes, or, rather, Morton. He changed his name 
later on.” She looked at him. “Surely you must 
have guessed that I knew him before this engage¬ 
ment—this play? How did you suppose that we 
got to he so intimate in two weeks of rehearsals? / 
didn’t spend the summer at Nantucket!” 

“That’s where Miss Legaye met him, isn’t it?” 

“Yes. She always goes down there, and Dukane 
wanted him to be there while Jack Carlton was— 
he was working on the play, you know. But I 


186 


THE SEVENTH SHOT 


hadn’t maneuvered and worked and planned for 
nothing. I’d got on in my profession, and played 
a few leading parts. I moved heaven and earth 
to get into his company—and I succeeded!” 

“You mean—^you wanted to see him again?” 

Her eyes flashed suddenly. For a second she 
looked fierce and threatening, as she had looked 
that fir^t day in the restaurant. 

“Wanted? I had thought of nothing else for five 
—^nearly six years! I used to be mad about him, 
you see. He made women feel like that.” 

“I know he did.” 

Barrison spoke naturally enough, but truth to 
tell, he was feeling a hit dazed. The Mortimer 
case was developing in a singular fashion. It was 
like one of those queer little Oriental toys where 
you open box inside box, to find in each case a 
smaller one awaiting you. He wondered whether 
he was ever to get to the end of this affair. The 
further you went in it, the more complicated it 
seemed to get. But she was speaking: 

“I was very much in love with him. But I never 
had any illusions as to his real character. He was 
rather a blackguard, in more ways than one. It 
wasn’t only that he treated women badly—or, any¬ 
way, lightly. He was crooked. I am very sure of 
that. He gambled, and the men in the company 
wouldn’t play with him; they said he didn’t play 
straight. There was one elderly man with a 
daughter, who was his particular crony; they were 


MISS TEMPLETON AT HOME 


187 


both supposed to be shady in a lot of ways— 
mean the two men. So far as I know, the girl 
was all right. Evidently they stuck together, too; 
perhaps they had to, knowing too much about each 
other! But I saw the older man at the theater 
two or three times during rehearsals.” 

“What did he look like?” demanded Barrison, 
struck with a sudden idea. 

“Oh, very respectable looking, like so many 
crooks! Elderly, as I say, and thin, and-” 

“You surely don’t mean Mortimer’s old valet, 
Wrenn?’ 

She looked at him in a startled fashion. 

“Why, yes, that’s the name. I don’t believe I 
should have remembered it if you hadn’t reminded 
me. The man was Wrenn, I am sure.” 

Jim’s pulse was pounding. Light at last, if only 
a glimmer! He was really finding out something 
about Mortimer’s past, really coming upon things 
that might have led up, directly or indirectly, to his 
murder. 

“Do you remember anything about the daughter?” 
he asked. 

“Not very much. She rode for us in one or two 
scenes, but she was hard to use in the picture. 
I do remember that she was an awfully disagree¬ 
able sort of girl, and most unpopular. What I 
wanted to tell you particularly was that Mortimer 
had a crooked record behind him, and that at 


188 


THE SEVENTH SHOT 


least one man near him—^this Wrenn—knew it. 
That was one thing. The other-” 

But Barrison could not help interrupting. 

“Just a moment, if you don’t mind, Miss Tem¬ 
pleton ! This is all tremendously interesting to 
me—^more interesting than you can possibly guess! 
It’s just possible that you’ve put me on the clew 
I’ve been looking for. Was there any man in that 
crowd called Blankey, or Blinkey, or anything like 
that?” 

She shook her head wonderingly. 

“Not that I know of,” she said. “But Alan 
had several particular pals, he and Wrenn. One 
of them may have been called that. I don’t know.” 

Jim was slightly disappointed, hut, after all, he 
had gained a good deal already; he could afford to 
be philosophical and patient. 

“And you don’t remember anything about the 
girl at all?” he insisted. “Only that she was dis¬ 
agreeable, and could ride?” 

“Wait a minute,” said Miss Templeton thought¬ 
fully; “I’ve some old snapshots tucked away. There 
ought to be some group with that girl in it.” 

Barrison smoked three cigarettes in frantic suc¬ 
cession while she hunted. Finally, she put a little 
kodak photograph in his hand. 

“There am I,” she said, “rather in the back¬ 
ground, dressed up as a beautiful village lass— 
do you see? And that’s Alan. He was handsome, 
wasn’t he?” Her voice was quite steady as she 


MISS TEMPLETON AT HOME 


189 


said it, but it had rather a minor ring. “And there 
—that girl over there in the shirtwaist and habit 
skirt, is Wrenn’s daughter.” 

As Barrison looked, he felt as certain as though 
he had seen her with his own eyes, that she— 
Wrenn’s daughter—^was the woman who had been 
in Mortimer’s dressing room the night before. 


CHAPTER XIX 


GLIMMERS IN THE DARKNESS 

H e raised his eyes to find Miss Templeton re¬ 
garding him from the other side of the table 
with a rather curious expression. 

“I had no idea that you would be interested in 
the Wrenn girl,” she said. “I thought that my 
information would point rather toward her father. 
Why are you interested in her?” 

Barrison hesitated. Charming as he found this 
woman, he had no mind to confide in her just yet. 
He countered with another question, one which 
had, as a matter of fact, trembled on his lips ever 
since he had come into the room. It was an im¬ 
pertinent question, and he knew that she would 
have a perfect right to resent it. Yet there was an 
indefinable attitude about her—^not familiarity, but 
something suggesting intimacy—^when she spoke to 
him, that made him somewhat bolder than his good 
taste could justify. 

“Miss Templeton,” he said, “you have just told 
me that you cared so much for Alan Mortimer that 
you waited for six years to get in the same com¬ 
pany with him. I know that only a few days ago 
you were still sufficiently interested in him to 
be-” 


GLIMMERS IN THE DARKNESS 


191 


He really did not know how to put it, but she did. 

“Jealous?” she suggested promptly, and without 
emotion. “Oh, yes, I was—in a way—insanely 
jealous. You see, it had become an obsession with 
me; I don’t imagine I really loved him any longer, 
but I was being cheated of something I had worked 
for and sacrificed for. Probably, not being a 
woman, you wouldn’t understand.” 

“Probably not,” said Jim. “And—will you for¬ 
give me for adding this?—I understand even less 
your mood to-day. Last night you were deeply 
moved at the play; I saw that. Perhaps”—he 
paused; he did not know whether to speak of the 
revolver or not—“you were even on the verge of— 
some scene—some violent expression of emotion, 
some-” 

She glanced at him, startled. “How did you 
know that? But, suppose it were true. Will you 
go on, if you please?” 

“No; I am merely offending you.” 

“You don’t—offend me.” Her tone was singular. 
“I should really like you to go on. There was 
something else that you did not understand. What 
was it?” 

“It is in the present tense,” he answered. “It’s 
something that I cannot understand now. Miss 
Templeton, you have done me the honor of asking 
me here to-day, and of talking to me with a certain 
measure of confidence. You have been most gra¬ 
cious and charming, a perfect hostess. I have en- 



192 


THE SEVENTH SHOT 


joyed myself completely. And yet—last night, the 
man who has occupied your thoughts and, let us 
say, your hopes for years past—^was tragically mur¬ 
dered.” 

She was silent for a second or two. “Is that 
what you don’t understand?” she demanded 
abruptly. 

“Yes. I cannot reconcile the two women I know 
to exist: The angry, passionate, jealous woman 
who looked—excuse me—as though she could have 
done murder herself, a short fortnight ago, and 
the woman who has been talking to me to-day 
about her fruitless quest for the Blue Bird of 
Happiness.” 

“I think that is rather stupid of you, then,” she 
answered composedly. “Can’t you see it’s all part 
of the same thing? The quest for love—for the 
unattainable—^but, Mr. Barrison, that is something 
else which puzzles you, which, in a way, jars on 
you. I can see it quite well. It is to you a 
strange and rather a horrible thing that I should 
be calm to-day, giving you lunch—and eating it, 
too!—talking of all sorts of things, while he, the 
man I used to be in love with, is lying dead. Isn’t 
that it?” 

“That is certainly part of it.” 

After a moment, she pushed back her chair and 
rose restlessly. 

“No, don’t get up!” she exclaimed, as he, toe, 
rose. “Sit still, and let me prowl about as I 


GLIMMERS IN THE DARKNESS 


193 


choose. I am not used to expressing myself, Mr. 
Barrison, except in my actions. Words always 
bother me, and I never seem able to make myself 
clear in them. Let me see if I can make you 
see this thing, not as I do, but a little less con^ 
fusedly. In the desert, a man sometimes follows 
a mirage for a long time; longs for it, prays for it, 
worships it from afar. He is dying of thirst, 
you see, and his feeling about it is so acute it is 
almost savage. The mirage isn’t real, the water 
that he thinks he sees is just a cloud effect, but 
he wants it, and while he is hunting it, he is not 
entirely sane. One day he finds it is not real. All 
that everlasting journeying for nothing; all that 
thirst for something that never has existed! Men 
do strange things when they find out that the water 
they were traveling toward is nothing but a mirage. 
Some of them kill themselves. But suppose, just 
when that man was losing his reason with the 
disappointment and the weariness—suppose just 
then some traveler, some Good Samaritan, or—just 
a traveler like himself, or—some—^never mind I” 
She choked whatever it was that she had meant to 
say. “Suppose, then, some one appears and offers 
him a real gourd of real water! Does he think 
much more about the mirage? He only wonders 
that he ever dreamed and suffered in search for 
it. But—it had taken the sight of the real clear 
water to make him see that the other was just 
a feverish dream.” 


194 


THE SEVENTH SHOT 


She paused in her restless pacing up and down 
the room, and looked at him. “Do you understand 
better now?” 

“No,” said Barrison flatly. “It is very pretty, and, 
I suppose, symbolic, but I have not the least idea, 
if you will pardon me for saying so, what you are 
driving at.” 

“Think it over,” said Miss Templeton, lighting 
another cigarette. “One more touch of symbolism 
for you. Suppose the—^traveler—who showed him 
the real gourd of water should spill it, or drink 
it all himself, or—refuse to share it, after all? 
What do you think would be likely to happen 
then?” 

“I should think the thirsty man would be quite 
likely to shoot him!” said Jim laughing a little. 

She smiled at him. “Ah,” she said, “you see 
you understand more than you pretend. Yes, that’s 

just what might happen- Oh, by the by, Mr. 

Barrison, there was something else that I sent for 
you to say. You know I warned you in regard 
to Kitty Legaye?” 

“Yes, but it is out of the question,” said Bar¬ 
rison. “I am sure that Mortimer’s murder was 
an overwhelming surprise to her.” 

“Maybe so,” she said thoughtfully. “But I am 
sure that, when I rushed out of the theater last 
night in that darkness and confusion, I saw Miss 
Legaye’s face at the window of a taxicab at the 
front of the house,” 


GLIMMERS IN THE DARKNESS 195 

“At the front of the house! But that would be 
impossible I” 

“I only tell you what I am certain I saw.” 

“Would you be prepared to swear that?” 

She considered this a moment. “No,” she ad¬ 
mitted finally. “I would not be prepared to go 
quite as far as that. I felt very sure at the time, 
and I feel almost as sure now. But a glimpse 
like that is sometimes not much to go by. I only 
tell you for what it is worth. And now, Mr. 
Barrison, I have an engagement, and I am going 
to turn you out. You forgive me?” 

“I am disposed to forgive you anything,” said 
Jim, with formal gallantry, “after the help you 
have given me—to say nothing of the pleasure I 
have had!” 

She made a faint little face at him. “That sounds 
like something on the stage!” she protested. “I 
wish you would think over my—my ” 

“Allegory?” he suggested. 

“I was going to say my confession. I am sure, 
the more carefully you remember it, the simpler 
it will become. Especially remember your own sug¬ 
gestion as to what would happen to the niggardly 
rescuer who might refuse to be a rescuer, after all!” 

Barrison saw fit to ignore this. He shook hands 
cordially and conventionally. 

“Good-by,” he said. “And thanks.” 

“Good-by,” she returned briefly. 

As he went downstairs, his face was a shade 


196 


THE SEVENTH SHOT 


hot. There were two reasons for it. For one 
thing, Miss Templeton’s attitude—^the allegory of 
the mirage and the gourd of water—what did she 
mean by it? Was it possible that she—^that she— 
Jim Barrison was not conceited about women, but 
he could hardly avoid being impressed with a 
subtle flattery in her manner, a flattery dignified 
by what certainly looked like rather touching sin¬ 
cerity. And on his part—^well, he was not yet 
prepared to tell himself baldly just what he did feel. 

Several years ago, Barrison had imagined him¬ 
self in love with a beautiful, heartless girl who 
had baffled him in one of his big cases. She had 
gone out of his life forever, and he had imagined 
himself henceforth immune. Yet this woman, with 
her curious paradoxes of temperament, her extra¬ 
ordinary frankness, and her strange reserves, her 
coldblooded dismissal of a past passion, and her 
emotional yearning for joy and the fullness of 
life—^well, he knew in his heart of hearts, whether 
he put it in words or not, that she thrilled him 
as no woman in the world had ever thrilled him yet. 


CHAPTER XX 


CHECKING UP 

I KNOW that the Wrenn woman probably did it,” 
* said Barrison, speaking to Lowry in the in¬ 
spector’s office. “And I’m going to move heaven 
and earth to find her. But I’ve a hunch—a sort of 
theory—that those two women, Miss Templeton and 
Miss Legaye, know more than they’ve told us yet.” 

He tried to keep himself from feeing guilty 
when he spoke of Grace Templeton; certainly his 
own reasons for particular interest in her had no 
place in a police investigation, and yet he became 
subtly embarrassed whenever her name came up. 

“Never,” said Lowry, smoking his large, black, 
bad cigar, “never have theories. Find out the situa¬ 
tion, and build your theories into that. You started 
off on the idea that these two women—Templeton 
and Legaye^—were mixed up in the business some¬ 
how. You’ve been chasing ’round, worrying about 
them, to make that idea good. Now, I don’t 
believe either of ’em knows a darned thing about 
it! They may both have been in love with the 
man, but nowadays actresses, with their futures 
ahead, don’t often queer themselves that way. How¬ 
ever, if there were any evidence against either of 
’em. I’d go after it fast enough. But there isn’t. 


198 


THE SEVENTH SHOT 


In fact, there’s conclusive evidence clearing them 
both. There’s the pistol, for instance. Not one 
initial among the four belonging to the two women 
resembles an M.” 

“One moment, inspector!” broke in Barrison. 
“That isn’t an M, it’s a W.” 

“Discovered that, eh?” remarked the inspector 
imperturably. “I wondered if you would. If you’ll 
look at the pistol closely, though, my dear boy, 
you’ll find that the angle at which it is engraved 
is a curious one. It might be either an M or a W. 
It depends on how you look at it. The letter is 
oddly shaped; looked at from different points, it 
makes just as good a W as it does an M, and 
vice versa. Well, the ladies in question have no 
more W’s in their names than they have M’s. Then, 
Miss Templeton could not have got behind the 
scenes in time.” 

“I imagine not,” admitted Jim. “Of course, we 
are dealing in what was possible, not likely; the 
door was unguarded just then, and-” 

“The door was unguarded after the shot, not 
before.” 

“If you believe the man Lynch. But—mind you, 
I suspect her no more than you, but—she was 
familiar with the theater.” 

“Familiar—hell! No one’s familiar with any 
place in the pitch dark! And the other woman 
had gone home, hadn’t she?” 

“Miss Legaye had gone home, as it was generally 



CHECKING UP 


199 


supposed,” said Jim, feeling obliged to register 
conscientiously every passing suspicion of his. “But 
Miss Templeton thinks she saw her near the front 
of the theater just after the tragedy.” 

“Well, you’ve only got that woman’s word for 
that! Will she swear to it? No? I thought notl 
She’s just talking through her hat, either to queer 
the other, or to make herself interesting to you! 
Say, Barrison, you’re dippy on this thing! I always 
thought you were a pretty snappy detective for a 
young un! Now get rid of your theories, and 
your hunches and your intuitions and your sus¬ 
picions, and check up! That’s what I’ve been doing 
all day, and, take it from me, while it may be 
old-fashioned, it’s the method that gets there nine 
times out of ten. Here goes!” 

He took a sheet of paper and made notes, as he 
talked. 

“Now that shot, according to the medical report, 
was fired at close range; very close range, indeed. 
The khaki of the man’s uniform was quite a bit 
burned by it. The bullet entered under the right 
arm, so he must have had his arms lifted, either 
to take hold of Miss Merivale, as she said, or for 
some other reason. It entered the body below the 
right armpit, and made a clean drill through the 
right lung at a slightly upward angle. Then it 
lodged in an upper rib just under the right breast. 
That explains the big splotch of blood on the breast. 
It could have been fired from either of two ways.” 


200 


THE SEVENTH SHOT 


He drew a rough diagram on the page before 
him, representing an imaginary, cylindrical man, 
two crosses, and a couple of dotted lines. 

“So! If Miss Merivale did it,” he explained, 
pencil in hand, “he’d have to be standing facing 
toward the front of the house, with his arm slightly 
raised, and his right side exposed to her aim.” 

“Isn’t that an unlikely attitude, under the cir¬ 
cumstances?” 

“It is unlikely, but it is perfectly possible. It’s 
only in songs that every little movement has a 
meaning all its own! Do you always have a good 
and logical reason for every motion you make? 
If you do, you’re a freak! The great difficulty 
with most detectives is that they try to get a 
reason and a sequence for everything, as though 
they were putting a puzzle together or writing a 
play. In real life, half the things we do we do 
for no reason at all, or from sheer natural human 
contrariness! However, never mind that. Now, 
if the other woman—^the woman we believe was in 
the theater last night—fired the shot, she only had 
to stand in close at the foot of the four-step en¬ 
trance, and reach up. Even if she were a small 
woman, she would be able to place her bullet just 
about where it was found. It’s a toss-up, Barrison. 
Either Miss Merivale fired that shot, or the unknown 
woman did.” 

“The unknown woman I don’t consider unknown 


CHECKING UP 201 

any longer. She is Wrenn’s daughter, without a 
doubt.” 

“On Miss Templeton’s testimony? Tut, tut, my 
dear Barrison!” 

“But, surely, the unknown woman, if you insist 
on continuing to think her unknown, is the more 
likely bet of the two?” 

Inspector Lowry pulled at his cigar, and wrinkled 
his heavy brows. 

“Likely! I’m mortally afraid of those ‘likely’ 
clews! When a thing looks too blamed ‘likely,’ I 
get scared. Nature and life and crime don’t work 
that way! Besides,” drawled the inspector, “we’ve 
not got her, and we have got the other one! There’s 
everything in possession!” 

“But you aren’t going to hold Miss Merivale on 
a mere-” 

“Hold your horses, boy! We aren’t holding her 
at all at present. She is as free as air, and will 
continue to be free for quite a while, anyway. 
But she’s being watched, Barrison, my boy, she’s 
being watched every minute. And she’ll go on 
being watched.” 

Lowry relighted his defunct cigar. 

“Incidentally,” he added, “we’ve got a few fresh 
points on this. You’d be interested in hearing them, 
I suppose?” 

“Interested!” 

“Very well. For one thing, Mrs. Parry, the 
dresser at the theater, has given us rather an odd 


202 


THE SEVENTH SHOT 


piece of evidence. She says that a messenger hoy 
called at Miss Merivale’s dressing room during the 
evening. She was not in the room at the time, 
but saw him knock, saw him admitted, and saw 
him go away.” 

“Nothing odd in that, surely—on a first night?” 

“Nothing at all odd. Mrs. Parry also recalls 
that, when she went in to help Miss Merivale 
for the last act-” 

“Miss Merivale had no change for the last act.” 

“No; so I understand. But she had gone back 
to her dressing room as usual for a few final 
touches. She had to alter her make-up slightly, 
hadn’t she?” 

“Yes; she had to be rather paler in the last 
act.” Barrison was somewhat impressed by Lowry’s 
thorough, even if archaic, way of getting his facts. 

“Quite so,” said the inspector equably. “Well, 
Mrs. Parry says that, as she entered the dressing 
room, she saw Miss Merivale walking up and 
down the room, evidently very angry. She had a 
note in her hand, and as she saw the woman, she 
tore it up in a lot of little pieces, and made an 
effort to become composed. Then she went hastily 
over to the dressing table, and caught up some¬ 
thing that was lying there.” 

“Something! What?” 

“Mrs. Parry does not know. She knows that it 
was a small object possibly as long as her hand. 


CHECKING UP 203 

She does not vouch for its shape. She just saw 
it in the flash of an eye.” 

“And what is Miss Merivale supposed to have 
done with it?” 

“Miss Merivale put it, very swiftly indeed, into 
the front of her white gown.” 

Barrison felt thunderstruck. That pretty, frank¬ 
eyed girl! Why, the thing was unbelievable! Im¬ 
petuously he said: 

“But, as you’ve impressed on me more than once, 
the testimony of a single person can’t be conclusive. 
Suppose-” 

“Suppose that testimony is borne out by that of 
others? Miss McAllister remembers Miss Meri- 
vale’s fingering the buttons on the front of her 
blouse several times, in a nervous way. And two 
of the minor actors in that scene say that she kept 
her hand at her breast when it was not part of 
the business, as though she could not entirely 
forget something she carried there.” 

Lowry paused, as though to let these points 
sink into his hearer’s intelligence. Then he con¬ 
tinued : 

“We found the tom scraps of the note, at least 
enough of them to be able to get quite a fair idea 
of what its purport had been.” Lowry opened the 
drawer of his desk and took out a Manila envelope. 
From it he drew a sheet of paper upon which had 
been pasted a number of words, some of them in 



204 


THE SEVENTH SHOT 


sequence and some of them detached and far apart. 
He pushed the paper across to Barrison. 

“Have a look,” he said laconically. Barrison 
read: 

How madly—^you—you accept—know I may hop—^you 
pretend—needn’t expect—scape, you beau—^might just as 
—make up—rrender—to-ni- 

“What do you make of it?” asked Lowry, after 
Barrison had stared at the cryptic mosaic of paper 
scraps for a moment or two. 

The younger detective began to fill in and piece 
together. He evolved the logical complete letter: 

You know how madly I love you. If you accept the 
accompanying I know I may hope. Though you pretend, 
you needn’t expect to escape, you beauty. You might just 
as well make up your mind to surrender the battle to-night. 

Lowry read it and smiled. 

“Quite good,” he pronounced. “Here’s another 
answer.” 

And he pushed another sheet toward Jim. 

This one read—^with the words of the recovered 
scraps underlined—as follows: 

No matter how determinedly, how madly you resist, you 
accept your fate. You know I may hope. You pretend 
courage, but you need not expect to escape, you beautiful 
fiend! You might just as well make up your mind to sur¬ 
render to-night. 

Barrison read, and then, with a slight shrug, 
pushed it back toward the older man. 

“I see very little difference,” he said. 


CHECKING UP 


205 


“Really? Can’t you see that one is a love letter, 
and one a threat?” 

“If you choose to put in phrases like ‘you 
beautiful fiend!’ ” said Barrison, raising his eye¬ 
brows. 

Lowry chuckled. “Doesn’t it sound kind of nat¬ 
ural?” he queried. “Oh, well, maybe I’m behind 
the times! I just tried to make it natural. But 
seriously, Jim, there is a difference, and you’d 
better get on to it quick. That letter—^which was 
from Mortimer; I’ve had the handwriting verified— 
might have been a threat to a woman whom he 
was dead set on getting, or a billet-doux to a 
girl he was sweet on, and who was acting shy. 
Isn’t that right?” 

Barrison frowned over the two epistles. 

“You’ve something else up your sleeve,” he de¬ 
clared, watching him closely. “I’ve a good mind 
to go and call on Miss Merivale myself.” 

“Do!” said Lowry, turning to his desk with the 
air of a man dismissing a lot of troublesome busi¬ 
ness, and glad of it. “You will find that she is 
too ill to see a soul; utterly prostrated since last 
night. Will that hold you for a while, you uppity 
young shrimp?” 


CHAPTER XXI 


tony’s report 

B ARRISON often dined at a chop house in the 
Thirties, near his own rooms. He repaired 
thither to-night, after having telephoned his where¬ 
abouts to Tony Clay’s boarding house, with a mes¬ 
sage for that youth to come on to join him there 
if he could. 

As he sat lingeringly over one of the meals he 
liked best, he endeavored to forget the problems 
which had stabbed at him relentlessly all day. He 
wished that it were only from a professional angle 
that the business worried him; to his own utter¬ 
most disgust, he found an enormous mass of per¬ 
sonal worry connected with it. He would like, 
for instance, to have been able to eliminate Missi 
Templeton. Or—would he? He was alarmed to 
find his condition so critical that he was not abso¬ 
lutely sure. 

He glanced up at last, uncertain whether with 
relief or disgust, to find Tony Clay wending his 
way toward him between tables. 

“Hello!” he said, with a very fine show of 
enthusiastic welcome. 

Tony bobbed an acknowledgment. When he was 
seated opposite Jim, he growled: 


TONY’S REPORT 


207 


“How doth the little butterfly 
Improve each shining hour, 

By sending other folks to spy, 

And bring to him more power! 

“What pretty things he learns to do, 

What merry games he beats! 

He lets the other fellow stew. 

While he sits still and eats!” 

Barrison could not help laughing, as he greeted 
him: 

“What do you suppose I’ve been doing? Sitting 
here ever since we parted? What are you going 
to eat, oh, faithful, good, and seemingly hungry 
servant?” 

“I want all the ham and eggs there are in the 
place, and the ham cut thick, and the eggs fried on 
both sides!” 

“You half-baked little ass!” remarked Jim affec¬ 
tionately. “Give your own order.” 

Tony ordered, with a vague yet spectacular care¬ 
lessness which made Barrison roar. 

“Not awake yet, Tony?” he queried, when his 
young friend had committed himself to mushrooms 
and guinea hen after the ham and eggs. 

“Eh? Sure I’m awake! Say, you didn’t give 
me a job at all, oh, no!” 

“The point is, did you get it?” 

“Get it? You bet your life I got it. But, Jim, 


208 


THE SEVENTH SHOT 


your hunch about that Golden Arms business was 
punk. There’s nothing doing there.” 

“No?” said Barrison. He tried to sound cool and 
casual, but it wasn’t much of a success; he felt 
a bit flat about it all. “Go ahead, Tony; suppose 
you tell me about it, eh?” 

Tony nodded, and straightened up at sight of the 
ham and eggs. 

“Well; first off you wanted a line on the maid. 
I got that, all right. She was one of those musical- 
comedy sorts. I spotted her from the beginning, 
and I guess you did, too. She wasn’t able to 
get away from her ‘lady’ much, but she was sup¬ 
posed to eat like anybody else, and-” 

“Tony, if you tell me that you gave up your 

sleep to go and fix her at lunch, and that-” 

“I don’t, and I didn’t tell you anything. But, 
as a matter of fact. I’d have bust if I hadn’t 
got a chance on this thing, Jim; you know that. 
Maybe I seem a hit slow sometimes, but, take 
it from me, I’m there with the goods when the time 
comes! Anyway, the maid’s story is perfectly 
straight, and I’m certain she’s telling the truth. 
It seems that she isn’t supposed to knock at Miss 
Legaye’s door until half after eleven. She ‘sleeps 
in a room on top of the house, connected by 
telephone, and only comes down at special times, 
or when she’s phoned for. Last night, she didn’t 
expect Miss Legaye in early, so didn’t come down¬ 
stairs to her door till about twenty minutes past 




TONY’S REPORT 


209 


eleven. It being a first night, she really didn’t 
imagine Miss Legaye would be in much before 
midnight. But at eleven twenty Maria—that’s the 
maid—came and knocked. She saw that the lights 
were turned up inside the room. 

“Miss Legaye called out to her: ‘Maria, don’t 
bother about me to-night; I’m tired, and I’m going 
to bed right away. Come at about eight to-morrow, 
please.” 

“Maria went up to bed then, and didn’t come 
down again until eight, the hour she was ex¬ 
pected. That was about fifteen minutes before 
you and I turned up this morning.” 

“Well?” demanded Barrison, not so much eagerly 
as savagely, for he was hot on what he thought 
to be a trail of some sort, even if not a criminal 
trail. “Well, what else does she say about when 
she came in to Miss Legaye’s rooms this morning?” 

“She says that she came to the door and knocked, 
as was always her rule, before using her key. 
She had a key, but was not expected by Miss 
Legaye to use it unless there was no answer. 
This time she didn’t get any answer, so she opened 
the door, and went in. 

“She went in to Miss Legaye’s bedroom, and 
found her half awake and half asleep. She said 
she had had a bad night, and had had to take her 
sleeping medicine. She looked pale. Maria says 
that the thing that upset her, Maria, most was 
the sight of Miss Legaye’s fine opera coat on a 


210 


THE SEVENTH SHOT 


chair near the window, where the rain had made 
it all wet. She said she had barely hung it up, 
and made Miss Legaye comfortable, when we tele¬ 
phoned up.” 

Barrison thought a moment. “That sounds all 
right,” he admitted. “Get ahead, Tony, to the rest 
of your investigation. For, of course, you must 
have got at some one else!” 

“Yes,” said Tony, as he munched fried ham; 
“I got at the night clerk of the Golden Arms.” 

“The night clerk? But he wasn’t on duty?” 

Tony buttered a piece of bread with a glance 
of scorn. “And would that make him inaccessible 
to yoUy you pluperfect sleuth?” he demanded caus¬ 
tically. “To me it merely meant that I would have 
to dig up his address and call on him when he 
was not on guard, so to speak. He is a very 
nice, pleasant youth. You would not get on with 
him at all; you would hurt his feelings. I have 
feelings of my own, so we were delighted with 
each other! You do neglect your opportunities, 
you know, Jim!” 

“Did you find out when Miss Legaye got in last 
night?” asked Barrison, but Tony’s answer was 
disappointing. 

“I did not,” he rejoined. “I found that my night 
clerk had not seen Miss Legaye at all last night.” 

Barrison jumped and stared at him. “Not seen 
her!” ejaculated he. 

“No. She had not come through the office at 


TONY’S REPORT 


211 


all. But he says that she often avoids the crowd 
in the hotel office by going up to her apartment 
by the back way. He says she hates publicity.” 

“Oh!” Barrison was thinking. “Is there, then, 
no one who would have seen her, if she came in 
‘the back way,’ and went up to her room?” 

“I can’t see how any one could have seen her. 
You see, Jim, it’s this way. In the Golden Arms 
Hotel, there is a side door, which is kept open and 
unguarded until after eleven o’clock at night. Lots 
of people, women especially, who don’t want to 
go through the crowded office at that hour, prefer 
to slip in that way. It’s a regular thing; they all 

do it. As to the elevator boy who-” 

“Yes, I was going to ask about him. Did he 

take her up?” 

“No, he didn’t. At that hour of the night, even 
an elevator boy sometimes nods. Anyway, he re¬ 
members the bell ringing for a long time while he 
was half asleep, and when he got to the lift there 
was no one there. The answer seems obvious.” 

“That she walked upstairs, having become tired 
of waiting?” 

“I should say so. Especially as she lived only 
one floor up, and often ran up the flight to save 
time 1” 

Barrison thought of this as he drank black coffee. 
“And that is all you found out?” he demanded sud¬ 
denly, raising his head. 

“Not at all!” responded Tony cheerfully. “I 



212 


THE SEVENTH SHOT 


found out that the first news the night clerk had 
had of Miss Legaye last night was a telephone mes¬ 
sage from her room at about eleven o’clock.” 

“A message? What was it?” 

“She said that she had a frightful headache, 
and that she wanted one of the bell boys to go 
out to the drug store for her, and get a medicine 
bottle filled—stuff that she often took when she 
had trouble about sleeping.” 

“And then?” 

“And then the boy went upstairs, and got the 
empty bottle from her. She was wearing a 
wrapper. He took the bottle out and had it filled. 
That’s all. It establishes the fact that she was in, 
and undressed, at eleven.” 

Barrison called for the check and paid it; then 
he still knitted his brows over the thing that 
troubled him. 

“Tony!” he said suddenly. 

“Well?” 

^^Could she have gotten upstairs into that hotel 
without being seen? I can’t believe it.” 

“Why not?” 

“I thought there were maids or guards on 
every floor.” 

“Quite so,” said Tony; “you remind me. There 
is a maid stationed on every floor of all decent 
hotels. There was one on every floor of this. 
But she is human, and therefore she is movable. 


TONY’S REPORT 


213 


This one, on Miss Legaye’s floor, was on duty up 
to twenty minutes to eleven, and she was on duty 
after eleven had struck. In between she had been 
called in to settle some newcomer, an old lady 
who wanted eight hundred and seventy things to 
which she was not entitled. She was away less 
than half an hour, but it was during that time 
that Miss Legaye must have gone to her room.” 

Rarrison still sat looking at his coffee cup in 
a troubled way, and Tony suddenly spoke: 

“Jim, that’s a cold trail, a dead one. See? Why 
do you keep tracking back to it? You know, and 
I know, that there’s nothing doing at that end of the 
story. What keeps you nosing around it?” 

“I can’t tell you, Tony,” said Rarrison, low and 
not too certainly. “It isn’t exactly evidence that 
keeps me following that trail. It’s-” 

“Say!” broke in his subordinate sharply. “Shall 
I tell you what it is? It’s that woman—it’s Miss 
Grace Templeton; that’s what it is. You’re dippy 
about her! And because she’s tipped you that 
there’s something queer about Miss Legaye, you 
believe it!” 

“I thought you admired Miss Templeton yourself!” 
said Jim Rarrison, rallying his forces. 

Tony Clay surveyed him in surprise. “Admired 
her?” he exclaimed. “Of course I admire her! 
Rut that wouldn’t prevent me from doing my bit 
on a case! I wouldn’t let a thing like that inter- 



214 


THE SEVENTH SHOT 


fere with me professionally!” He spoke most 
grandiloquently, with a swelling chest. 

Jim Barrison looked at him a moment seriously; 
then his face broke into irrepressible smiles. 
“Wouldn’t you?” he queried. “Tony, you’ll be a 
great man one of these days!” 


CHAPTER XXII 


“rita the daredevil” 

pROMPTLY at eight o’clock, Barrison presented 
himself at the entrance to Coyne’s Theater, 
where he had agreed to meet Teddy Lucas, of the 
Blaze. 

The house was of the flagrantly cheap variety, 
to judge hy the people then going in. On either 
side of the glaringly illuminated doorway were vivid 
lithographs of ladies with extremely pink cheeks 
and tights, and gorgeously yellow hair and jewelry; 
also, of prodigiously muscled acrobats, performing 
miraculous feats in impossible positions. 

Barrison found his own eyes attracted, almost 
at once, by something which stood out, oasislike, 
among the more lurid and obvious sheets; a large 
frame containing three photographs, under the, 
plainly printed title: ‘Rita the Daredevil! Late of 
the World-famous Blankley Daredevils!” 

Then this was the girl who had been playing in 
the riding act with Mortimer when Dukane came 
upon him first. Now, if by any chance Jim could 
connect that girl with Wrenn’s disagreeable daugh¬ 
ter, whom Miss Templeton remembered! He was 
eager for a sight of her. Would that rather dim 
snapshot he had seen prove sufficient to identify 


216 


THE SEVENTH SHOT 


her? He wondered! None of these pictures looked 
particularly like that nondescript smudge of a 
woman in the corner of the kodak picture which 
had been shown him that day. 

He examined them with close interest. One 
was of Rita the Daredevil, sitting a vicious-looking, 
rearing broncho, with a nonchalant air, and huge, 
ornamental spurs; another was of Rita the Dare¬ 
devil firing with a rifle at an apple held up 
by a fat man in evening clothes. The third was, 
presumably, a likeness of Rita the Daredevil herself, 
doing nothing in particular but scowl at the world 
from beneath a picturesque sombrero. 

She certainly looked disagreeable enough to jus¬ 
tify Grace Templeton’s unpleasant recollection of 
her. Of a markedly Spanish type, with the faint 
Indian cast which is so prevalent in South America, 
she was in no sense beguiling or prepossessing. 
It would be hard to vision those glowering black 
eyes soft with any tender emotion; her mouth 
was as hard and as bitter in line as that of some 
fierce yet stoical young savage, brooding over a 
darkly glorious nightmare of revenge. 

Fascinated, even while repelled, by the odd, for¬ 
bidding face, Rarrison started as he was roused 
from his momentary trance by the cool, rapid tones 
of Teddy Lucas: 

“Awfully sorry if you’ve been waiting. I don’t 
imagine we’re late for our act, though. Have 


“RITA THE DAREDEVIL” 217 

you a cigarette? We can smoke here. Righto! 
Come along!” 

They went in and took the places reserved for 
them in a stage hox. Jim was glad to he so 
close to the stage; he wanted to study this woman 
as minutely as he could. As they settled them¬ 
selves, an attendant changed the cards giving the 
names of the acts. With a real thrill Rarrison saw 
that they read: 

“Rita the Daredevil.” 

“Good stuff,” murmured Lucas critically. “They 
don’t say what she does, nor what makes her a 
daredevil. They just say it, and wait for her 
to make good. Of course, she probably won’t.” 

He took the evening newspaper from under his 
arm, and on the margin of the first page scribbled 
a short enigmatic note in pencil. On the stage was 
a small table decorated with a .44 rifle and several 
small weapons, a target painted in red and gold 
instead of black and white, and a large mirror. 
Almost immediately Rita the Daredevil made her 
entrance. 

She was dressed in the regulation “cowgirl’s” out¬ 
fit—short skirt of khaki, sombrero, heavy leather 
belt, high-laced brown boots, embroidered gauntlets. 
As though to give a touch of daintiness to her 
costume, she wore a thin white shirtwaist, and a 
scarlet tie. Also, the buckle on her belt was of 
gold, and there was a golden ornament in the 
band of her broad felt hat. 


218 


THE SEVENTH SHOT 


Daintiness, however, seemed out of place. There 
was about the young woman an absence of feminine 
coquetry that set her apart from most vaudeville 
performers. Sometimes she forced a smile, and 
made a little bow to the house, but conciliatory 
measures were plainly foreign to this woman’s 
temperament. She was there to do certain things; 
one would be safe to wager that she would do 
them well. 

And she did. She was a marvelous shot, cool, 
and steady; and the men in her audience were 
genuinely enthusiastic. A good many of them 
could appreciate straight and clever shooting when 
they saw it. 

She shot bull’s-eyes, tossed glass balls, shot apples 
on the head of her meek partner, the smiling 
man of the photograph; she shot over her shoulder, 
looking in a mirror; she shot, after sighting care¬ 
fully, with her eyes blindfolded; she shot with gims 
of every size and caliber. In everything she did 
was apparent the same crisp, grim efficiency. She 
did not do her work at all gayly, nor as if she 
enjoyed it. There was something resentful about 
her whole personality. Doubtless she grudged the 
entertainment she gave and would have preferred 
to earn her salary, if possible, by making herself 
unpleasant to people, instead of diverting them! 

Barrison gave many glances to the man who so 
patiently and self-effacingly assisted her. He was, 
in spite of the professional smile, not a happy- 


“RITA THE DAREDEVIL” 


219 


looking man. There were moments when, for all 
his creases of flesh, he looked positively haggard, 
and his eyes were very tired. He was a man who 
for some reason lived under a shadow or a burden 
of some sort; and—this belief came suddenly to 
Barrison—she herself suffered from the same handi¬ 
cap. These two people were the victims either 
of a heavy trouble, a grievous disappointment, or 
a gnawing wrong. You could see the pinches and 
rakings of suffering in both faces. 

The climax of Rita’s act was now pending. 
The partner came down to the footlights, and ex¬ 
plained that “The Daredevil, whose life had been 
one hourly challenge to such dangers as lesser 
mortals hold in justifiable dread,” would now show 
the ladies and gentlemen how little she cared 
for common risks or common caution. It appeared 
that she wished any one who liked to come and 
examine the pistols she was going to use. It 
was necessary for the audience to understand that 
they were all loaded. Did any one care to ex¬ 
amine them? 

Yes; to Teddy Lucas’ surprise, Barrison did. He 
leaned over the side of the box, and had the 
satisfaction not only of noting that they were all 
loaded, six chambers each, but that each one of 
the three that she intended to use was marked in 
precisely the same way as the one which was 
now locked up in his safe at home. 


220 


THE SEVENTH SHOT 


“I thought she did the stunt with four,” said Ted, 
arching his eyebrows. “She was advertised to.” 

Another point. Until recently, she had done 
her trick with four pistols, all exactly alike. Where 
was the fourth? Jim knew where the fourth was. 
Naturally, there had not been time to have an¬ 
other made and marked in precisely the same way. 

He handed hack the weapons, saw them ex¬ 
amined by several other curious people, and settled 
back to see what she was going to do with them. 

The stunt itself turned out to be disappointing. 
It was a mere juggling trick, the old three-ball 
affair, done with loaded pistols; that was all. To 
be sure, there was a certain amount of risk about 
it, since even a clever shot cannot always be respon¬ 
sible for what will happen to a trigger when it is 
caught in the lightning manipulation of juggling. 
But it was not nearly so dangerous as it was 
advertised to be. 

“Now, it’s safe to assume,” remarked Teddy lan¬ 
guidly, in Barrison’s ear, “that she never fired one of 
those things off yet, in that stunt, and never will!” 

And then two things happened. It was difficult 
even for Jim Barrison’s trained mind to tell him 
which had happened first. His eyes caught sight of 
some one in the box opposite, a gray-haired, dig¬ 
nified figure of middle height, not sitting, but 
standing with his look fixed sternly upon the stage. 
It was Max Dukane, the great manager, and Barri- 
son, in a great flash of intuition, knew why he was 


“RITA THE DAREDEVIL” 


221 


there. He had come either to warn or threaten these 
people who knew him since the days when he had 
discovered Mortimer in the show known as Rlank- 
ley’s Daredevils. 

And at the selfsame instant, it seemed, the pistols 
which Rita was tossing so composedly and surely, 
experienced a hitch in their methodical orbits. One, 
two, three, they rose and fell, and she caught them 
neatly each time, and sent them whirling as though 
they were tennis balls, instead of loaded guns. But 
something had happened. There was a faint cry, 
Barrison was near enough to hear it. And then a 
shot. 

The detective’s hair seemed to rise. It was so 
soon after that other tragedy! Was it possible? 
But nothing had happened, it seemed, except a flesh 
wound for Rita herself. She was holding her hand 
against her arm, and staring in front of her in a 
dazed and frightened way. Her partner was tear¬ 
ing away her sleeve to investigate, and the house 
was wildly excited. It was superb advertising, of 
course; only, Barrison knew that it was not ad¬ 
vertising. She had been frightened by Dukane’s 
sudden appearance, and even her sure hand had 
lost its cunning for a second. 

He looked toward the other box sharply, at the 
very moment, as he thought, when Rita had sunk 
down wounded. But even so, he was too late. 
Dukane had gone. 

“Shall we go behind now, and have a talk with 


222 


THE SEVENTH SHOT 


her?” suggested Teddy Lucas, rising. “Really, that 
was quite well staged. Every one will be twice as 
ready to believe her a daredevil after they have 
seen her wounded. Ready?” 

They made their way behind. 

Barrison’s blood was thrilling with that excite¬ 
ment of the chase which keeps a good detective alive 
on this earth, and without which one can scarcely 
imagine him contented. 


CHAPTER XXIII 


TWIXT THE CUP AND THE LIP 

T3 ITA received them in her dressing room, which 
•TV was frankly a utilitarian apartment. Since she 
had to share it in turn with other performers, she 
had not much chance to impress her individuality 
upon it. And, for that matter, she was not the type 
of woman, probably, who would have thought it 
worth her while to take the trouble. She scorned 
frivolities. 

When they saw her at close range, they were 
both struck by the fact that she was scarcely made 
up at all. Doubtless, if she had taken the trouble, 
she could have softened her face and expression, 
and made herself less Hard and repellent. Not that 
she was ugly. She was not; her features were reg¬ 
ular enough, and her black eyes quite splendid in 
their smoldering sort of way. If she had not bound 
up her hair so tightly, its masses and luster would 
have been a sensation; and her figure was good, iR 
a lean, wiry style all its own. 

The truth was that she was uncompromising, 
unyielding, ungraceful as she was ungracious. 

If Rita had really experienced a shock during her 
act, she certainly had recovered from it, so far as 
the eyes of outsiders could determine. 



224 THE SEVENTH SHOT 

After greeting them, she eyed her visitors coldly 
and sharply. 

“Wanted to talk to me?” she demanded, in rather 
a metallic voice. 

“Please, for the Blazey' said Teddy Lucas, in his 
most insinuating tone. 

But Rita the Daredevil shook her head with a 
slight scowl. 

“Waste of time,” she stated. “We aren’t playing 
here after next week, and-” 

“I beg your pardon!” slid in Teddy smoothly but 
firmly. “You are not playing at this theater, but 
you have time at-” 

“I tell you-” she began hotly. But another 

voice made itself heard. It was, as they were some¬ 
what surprised to find, the voice of Rita’s sub¬ 
servient partner, who had appeared just behind 
them, and who now confronted them with a curious 
little air of authority, in spite of his plump body 
and his very ancient evening dress. 

“If you will excuse me for interrupting,” he said 
courteously, and made them a bow which was quite 
proper and dignified. It was the bow of—what 
was it? Jim tried to think. Was it the bow of a 
head waiter, or a floorwalker, or—a ringmaster? 
That was it, a ringmaster. This man was used to 
the exacting proprieties of the circus. No one else 
could be so perfect! Instantly, Jim placed him as 
Blankley himself. 

“If you will excuse me for interrupting,” he re- 


’TWIXT THE CUP AND THE LIP 


225 


peated gently. “Our plans have changed. Vaude¬ 
ville performers live, unfortunately, in a world of 
changes. We had expected to play in and around 
New York for some weeks; our expectations have 
not materialized. We leave New York to-night.” 

“To-night!” repeated Teddy Lucas, sitting up and 
opening his eyes. “Isn’t that rather short notice?” 

“It is,” said the fat man, and Jim saw his hand 
shake as he raised it to wipe the perspiration from 
his forehead. But he was firm enough, for all that. 
“It is extremely sudden, but—it is—advisable.” 

“More advantageous time, I suppose?” said Teddy, 
watching him with seeming indifference. 

“Yes, yes,” said the fat man eagerly, and his 
hand shook more than ever. “More advantageous 
time! Meanwhile, if you care to interview Mrs. 
Blankley- 

Barrison pricked up his ears. Mrs. Blankley! 

“She—I—we would he glad to be mentioned in 
your paper,” went on the fat man hurriedly. “You 
could hardly give your space to a more scintillating 
■—a more-” 

“Nick,” said Rita the Daredevil shortly, “I don’t 
want to be interviewed. You arranged with Coyne 
for this gentleman to come, representing his paper, 
but I don’t stand for it. You never can get it out 
of your head that we’re not running our own show 
any longer, and that the public doesn’t care a con¬ 
tinental about us. You keep hanging on to the old 
stuff. You keep thinking that because you used to 




226 


THE SEVENTH SHOT 


be a big noise in your own little gramophone, you’re 
loud enough to take in Broadway nowadays. It 
doesn’t get across, Nick. If these gentlemen want a 
story,” and her voice was keen and bitter, “they’d 
better get after something else.” 

“Miss—er—I mean, Mrs. Blankley,” said Teddy, 
“weren’t you hurt, when that bullet exploded to¬ 
night?” 

She changed color; oh, yes, she did change color. 
But she said with a swiftness that made Jim Barri- 
son admire her the more: “That? Oh, that was just 
advertising! Didn’t you guess?” 

Teddy Lucas looked at her. “H’m!” he said, de¬ 
liberating. “I confess I did think it was advertising 
at first, but-” 

Rita looked strange; for a moment it seemed that 
she was going to strike the newspaper man. Then 
she let her heavy, dark eyes sink, and turned away 
with a muttered remark that none of them could 
catch. 

It was Jim’s moment; the only moment that had 
been put straight into his hands that night. He 
seized it boldly. The fat man was talking nerv¬ 
ously and volubly to the reporter; there was a 
chance. 

“Miss Wrenn,” said Jim Barrison deliberately, 
“will you let me talk to you alone?” 

He never forgot the look that came into those 
big black eyes, as she raised them then to meet his. 
He could not have told whether it was horror or 



227 


’TWIXT THE CUP AND THE LIP 

hatred, but he was sure that it was one or the 
other. For a full half minute she stared at him 
so, her face white as chalk. Then she drew a deep 
breath, and took a step back. 

“Since I must,” she said, answering his request. 
“But I warn you, it will be to very little purpose— 
I know why you are here. Do you truly think 
that—this—this investigation—is worth your 
while?” 

“I don’t know that,” he said steadily, but still in a 
voice that was audible to her alone. “I only know 
that it is necessary; that it is my duty. I know 
that you are the girl I am seeking. Your name is 
Wrenn. Is it not?” 

“It is,” she replied. “Marita Wrenn!” 

Marita I So the initials were to be explained 
logically after all! M for Marita; W for Wrenn. 
The two engraved in that odd fashion which he 
could quite understand had been of her inspira¬ 
tion. 

“Will you believe,” he went on, steadying his 
voice, and keeping all excitement out of it, “that I 
am only trying to get at the facts? That I-” 

“Marita!” came the voice of the fat man sharply. 
“This gentleman”—he indicated Lucas—“has asked 
us to take supper with him and his friend. We 
will go?” 

“I should be delighted,” she said, in the mechan¬ 
ical way, which one felt was her way of accepting 
all pleasures in life, however they came. 


228 


THE SEVENTH SHOT 


Blankley turned to them with his anxious little 

i)ow. “If you would pardon us-” he begged. 

^‘My wife must take off a little make-up, and then 
—^may we join you at the stage door?” 

Barrison hated to let the woman out of his sight, 
but he scarcely knew how to refuse so simple a re¬ 
quest. He was here as Teddy Lucas’ guest, and 
not in his professional capacity. So the two young 
men went out to the stage door to wait. 

They waited until, with a short laugh, the re¬ 
porter showed his watch. Almost sixty minutes had 
gone by. 

“I don’t know just your game, my dear fellow,” 
he said, as he turned away. “But, for my part, 
I think you’ve been jolly well sold!” 

“How about you?” said Barrison, raw about his 
part of it, and yearning to be disagreeable. 

Lucas laughed. “I’m fixed all right,” he said 
amiably. “I’m going to write a peach of a story 
about the shock which led to the canceling of the 
Blankley engagement 1” 

“What shock?” asked Barrison. 

Lucas looked at him in polite scorn. “My dear 
friend,” he said, in a tired voice, “didn’t you see 
Dukane in the box to-night?” 

Barrison jumped. “You mean you saw him?” he 
exclaimed. 

Lucas sighed heavily. “Saw him?” he said. “My 
dear fellow. I’m a reporter!” 



CHAPTER XXIV 


WHAT SYBIL HAD HIDDEN 

J IM BARRISON was dog tired. He felt as though 
the past twenty-four hours had been twenty-four 
months; it scarcely seemed possible that the murder 
had been committed only the night before! Never¬ 
theless, weary as he was he called up Lowry and 
told him of his evening’s experience. The inspector 
made some cryptic grunts at the other end of the 
wire, and ended up with a curt ‘T’ll see about it. 
Good night!” 

Barrison smiled, but felt slightly annoyed as he 
hung up the receiver. “ ‘I’ll see about it!’ As 
though he were Providence incarnate, and could 
wind up the moon and stars to go differently if he 
felt like it!” 

He was past more than a fleeting flash of resent¬ 
ment, however, and lost no time in wending his 
way homeward and to bed. Tara made a dignified 
offering of Scotch and sandwiches, but he waved 
him away sleepily, and tumbled in. 

So profound was the slumber into which he im¬ 
mediately fell, that the shrill ringing of the tele¬ 
phone hardly pierced his rest. If he heard it at 
all, it was only as a component part of his fitful 
dreams. 


230 


THE SEVENTH SHOT 


The voice which came to Tara over the wire was 
cool and crisp: 

“Mr. Barrison, please.” 

Tara glanced compassionately toward the bedroom 
where his master was already in deep repose. 

“No, sir!” he responded, politely but firmly. 

“What do you mean—no? Has he gone to bed?” 

“Yes—^please.” Tara was nothing if not defer¬ 
ential. 

“Well, get him up. I want to speak to him.” 

“Honorably excuse,” said Tara, with an instinctive 
bow to the instrument, “but—I notr 

“You won’t call him?” 

“Please—I not!” 

The voice at the end of the wire cursed him 
gently, and then continued: 

*‘Well, will you take a message?” 

“Oh, yes, please—I thank!” 

The Jap hastily seized pencil and paper, and, 
after making sundry hieroglyphics in his own lan¬ 
guage, said good night humbly, hung up, and 
translated what he had noted into English. In the 
morning, when he carried coffee in to a refreshed 
but still drowsy Barrison, the message which that 
gentleman read was as follows: “Hon. gent, paper 
man say if you please call. Import.” 

Barrison knew that this meant Teddy Lucas in all 
probability, but he also knew that it was too early 
to catch him at the newspaper office yet. He ate 


WHAT SYBIL HAD HIDDEN 


231 


breakfast and hunted through the morning papers 
for matters of interest. In the Blaze, he found a 
picturesque little account of the spectacular exit of 
Mr. and Mrs. Blankley. It was toned down, how¬ 
ever, a good deal, Dukane’s name not being men¬ 
tioned, and nothing more sensational being sug¬ 
gested than that “Rita the Daredevil” lost her nerve 
after the narrow escape which had left her in a 
state of collapse when the Blaze representative 
was admitted to her presence. Her husband had 
urged her discontinuance of the engagement, et 
cetera. Barrison could not entirely understand, but 
he knew that the ways of newspapers were strange 
and devious. Later he would call up Lucas and find 
out more about it. 

It was at this point that his eye caught sight of 
another item on the page given over to dramatic 
news. It was starred in a half column, and was 
headed: 

TRAGIC AND SENSATIONAL ROMANCE OF MISS 
KITTY LEGAYE! 

Popular Actress Announces Her Engagement to Stax Who 
Was Murdered. 

(Interview by Maybelle Montagu.) 

Miss Kitty Legaye, whose charm and talent have en¬ 
deared her 'to thousands of the American public, is to-day 
that saddest of figures, a sorrowing woman bereft of the 
man who was to have been her husband. Alan Mortimer, 
whose terrible and mysterious death has stirred the entire 
theatrical world and baffled police headquarters, has left 


232 


THfi SEVENTH SHOT 


behind him a woman whose white face bears the stamp of 
ineffaceable love and endless grief. 

In deepest mourning, which enhanced her childlike love¬ 
liness, the exquisite little actress whose impersonations of 
young girls upon the stage have made her famous all over 
the continent consented to receive the representative of the 
New York Bl<]:ze. It was with a touching simplicity that 
she said: 

‘‘We had intended to postpone the announcement of our 
engagement until later, but he has been taken from me, 
and why keep silent any longer? It is, in a way, a comfort 
to let the world know that we were to have been married— 
that, at least, I have the right to mourn for him!’’ 

Her sweet voice was choked with sobs, and in the eyes 
of even the seasoned interviewer there were tears. 

Barrison shook his head, and smiled a wry, cyn¬ 
ical smile. 

“Not so prostrated that she can’t make capital out 
of it!” he commented to himself. “Lost no time, I 
must say. However, it’s no concern of mine.” 

Refreshed by his sound sleep, he rushed through 
the process of dressing like a whirlwind, and went 
off to try the doubtful experiment of another call 
upon Mr. Dukane. 

But before he went up to the great man’s office, 
he paused to take due thought. After all, was it the 
best thing to do? He considered, and before he had 
decided, the door of the elevator opened, and young 
Norman Crane came out. He looked fresh and 
wholesome as ever, but, Jim thought, a bit anxious. 
He greeted the detective cordially. 


WHAT SYBIL HAD HIDDEN 


233 


“Hello!” he said. “Beastly mess it all is, isn’t it? 
Were you going up to see the old man? Because 
you won’t. Not unless you’ve an awful drag at 
court! Every one in the world is waiting in the 
outer office, all the poor old ‘Boots-and-Saddles’ 
hunch, and everybody in town that’s left over.” 

“I hadn’t made up my mind whether I was going 
up or not,” admitted Barrison. “Now I have, I 
think. I’ll walk along with you, if you’ve no ob¬ 
jection?” 

“Rather not! I’m-” He hesitated. “I’m go¬ 

ing to inquire for Sybil.” 

“How is Miss Merivale? I was sorry to hear that 
she was so ill.” 

“Who told you? Oh, it would he Lowry, of 
course! I can’t get used to the idea of having Sybil 
watched and spied on by policemen. Beg pardon!” 
He flushed boyishly. “I don’t mean to be offensive, 
Mr. Barrison, and you never strike me like that 
quite, but—^you must know what I mean?” 

“Naturally I do,” said Jim, who liked the lad. 
“And, if you don’t mind, I’ll come with you when 
you go to inquire—not in a professional capacity!” 
he added hastily, seeing the glint of suspicion in the 
other’s transparent eyes. 

Crane laughed a little awkwardly. “I’d be very 
glad to have you,” he said frankly, “and, for that 
matter, in your professional capacity, too! Mr. Bar¬ 
rison, am I right in thinking that—^that man suspects 
Sybil?” 



234 


THE SEVENTH SHOT 


“Suspects is rather a plain term and rather a 
strong one. I don’t think he absolutely suspects 
her; but there are things that will need a bit of 
clearing up.” 

“I thought sol” The young man’s manner ex¬ 
pressed a sort of angry triumph. “Now, Mr. Harri¬ 
son, you must come. Sybil must talk to you, 
whether she feels like it or not! You know, the 
whole idea is too absurd-” 

“I think it is absurd myself!” said Barrison 
kindly. “But you know it’s just those ridiculous 
things that make such a lot of bother in the world! 
Miss Merivale, I’m convinced, is the last person in 
the world to have committed any sort of a crime.” 

“Heavens! I should say so!” 

“And yet—^what was it that she hid in her dress 
that night?” 

Norman stopped and stared at him. “Why should 
you think she hid anything in her dress?” he de¬ 
manded in unfeigned astonishment. 

“I’ll tell you by and by,” said Barrison evasively. 
He saw that Crane was really surprised by this, 
and he was debating with himself just how far it 
was politic and wise to go in this direction. 

In another few minutes they were at the boarding 
house where Sybil lived—a quiet house in the upper 
Forties, kept by a gentle, gray-haired woman who 
seemed of another day and generation, and who 
called Norman “my dear boy,” with a soft Southern 
drawl. 


WHAT SYBIL HAD HIDDEN 


235 


Miss Merivale was better, she said; so much so, in 
fact, that she had had her removed into her own 
parlor at the front of the house, where she could 
have more cheerful surroundings and see her 
friends, the sweet lady added, smiling, if she felt 
strong enough. If the gentlemen would take the 
trouble to walk upstairs, she was sure they would 
do Miss Merivale good. She was better, but not so 
bright as one could wish. 

The boarding-house keeper and Norman Crane 
ascended first, and shortly after the former came 
back to tell Barrison that they were expecting him, 
if he would go up. 

“I thought,” she added softly, “that they would 
want to see each other, and so I had her couch fixed 
in my place, where I can be in and out, so to 
speak. Not that Fd have the time,” she added, 
gently humorous, “but it’s the idea, you know! I’m 
from the So’th, sir, and I have my funny notions 
about the proprieties!” 

Sybil, on the landlady’s old-fashioned sofa, looked 
rather pathetically wan, but she made an effort to 
greet Jim with some animation and cordiality. It 
w^as plain that she was still very shaken and de¬ 
pressed, and that her fiance was much worried about 
her. 

She went at once to the matters that were in all 
their minds. It was characteristic of the girl that 
she did not shrink from approaching even the sub¬ 
jects responsible for her recent collapse. And she 


236 


THE SEVENTH SHOT 


was very fair to look at, in her soft blue dressing 
gown lying back among the faded chintz cushions, 
with her ash-blond hair in two long braids upon her 
shoulders. Kitty Legaye should have seen her now! 

“Mr. Barrison,” she said at once, “it is awfully 
good of you to have called. Norman and I know 
that you are here as a friend, and not as an officer 
of the law, and we are both grateful. Mr. Barri¬ 
son, you surely don’t think I had anything to do 
with—^with that horror the other night?” 

“No, I don’t,” said Barrison, speaking as briefly 
and frankly as she was speaking herself. 

“Well, will you tell me on what grounds they are 
—are watching me?” 

“You are sure they are?” he said, to gain time. 

“Sure! Of course, I am sure! Look at that man 
over there, reading the paper and occasionally glanc¬ 
ing up at the sky to see if it is going to rain. Isn’t 
he watching this house?” 

Barrison smiled. “Probably he is,” he admitted. 
He had noticed the man himself as he came in, but 
he had not imagined that the girl herself knew of 
her situation. 

“Well,” she insisted, and a faint spot of feverish 
color came into either cheek, “what is it that they 
expect to find out? What is it? I know that I was 
there, on the scene, but—but—surely that man 
would not have let me go if he had thought I had 
—done it!” 

Barrison was convinced of her innocence; but he 


WHAT SYBIL HAD HIDDEN 


237 


was also convinced that the wisest course would be 
to enlighten her as to the points wherein her posi¬ 
tion was open to question by the law. He had hesi¬ 
tated because his connection with the case, while 
unofficial, more or less tied his hands; but, after all, 
the inspector had given him leave to use his own 
j udgment. 

He spoke straightforwardly. “What did you hide 
in your dress, just before the last act, the night 
before last. Miss Merivale?” 

She started upright on the couch, and looked at 
him with wide eyes of amazement. “How did you 
know that?” she asked blankly. 

“But you didn’t, did you, dear?” struck in Nor¬ 
man Crane, taking her hand in his. “What could 
you have put in your dress? It’s absurd, as I told 
Mr. Barrison!” 

She thought for a moment, and then said quietly: 
“I put into my dress something that I wanted to 
hide, chiefly from you, Norman. I knew that if you 
saw it, you would be angry.” 

Norman Crane looked as though she had struck 
him. 

“You did hide something, then?” he exclaimed. 

“I certainly did, and would again, under the same 
conditions. Only, I can’t see how any one knew of 
the fact. Who was it, Mr. Barrison?” 

“Your dresser, the woman Parry.” 

“Of course!” She nodded slowly. “She was al¬ 
ways a meddlesome old thing! And I know that she 


238 


THE SEVENTH SHOT 


was consumed with curiosity when I got the pack¬ 
age and the note that night.” 

“The package and the note!” repeated Norman 
Crane. “Sybil, you are crazy! What are you talk¬ 
ing about?” 

“I know what the note was,” put in Barrison, 
smiling at her reassuringly. “At least, I know part 
of it, and I was daring enough to make up the rest 
of it in Lowry’s office last night!” 

Sybil looked up at him with a flash of laughter 
in her eyes, though poor Crane was still dazed. 

“And what did you make of it?” she asked, in a 
tone that tried for raillery and only achieved a cer¬ 
tain piteous bravado. 

“I made of it a sort of love letter, if you can call 
it so,” said Barrison gently, “which might have ac¬ 
companied a present, something which could be con¬ 
sidered in the light of a test—no, that is not the 
word, a proof of-” 

“A proof,” she broke in passionately, “of my 
willingness to do something, and to be something 
that I could not do and could not be! And you 
made that out of it, with only those torn scraps 
to go by! Oh, you understand. I see that you do 
understand!” 

She hid her face in her hands and cried. In a 
moment, however, she put aside her own emotion, 
and explained: 

“He—Mr. Mortimer—had tried to make love to me 
many times; you both know that. Norman was 



WHAT SYBIL HAD HIDDEN 


239 


furious with him, and I was always afraid that 
there would be trouble between them. Of my part 
of it—^well, it is much harder to speak. Being men, 
perhaps you will not understand the sort of power 
of fascination that a man can have over a woman, 
even when she does not love him. I shall always 
believe that Alan Mortimer had some hypnotic power 
—^however, that is not the point. Though I had al¬ 
ways repulsed him, he could not help knowing that 
he had influence over me; a man always knows. 
You see, I don’t try to lie; I tell you the truth, even 
though it isn’t a pleasant sort of truth to tell.” 

“I know it is most painful to tell,” Barrison said, 
feeling indeed profoundly sorry for her, and most 
respectful of her courage in speaking as she did. 
Norman Crane said nothing. 

“That night—the first night,” Sybil went on, 
“Alan Mortimer made it especially—hard for me. 
He had chosen an ornament for me, a splendid jew¬ 
eled thing, but I had refused it several times. That 
night, he sent it to me with a note, and told me 
that he expected me to wear it that evening, after 
the play was over.” 

“Have you got it now?” asked Barrison. 

She reached out to a small table near by and took 
it from a hand bag. “I have never been separated 
from it,” she said simply. “It is too valuable, and— 
until to-day—I did not know just what to do 
with it.” 

In another moment it lay before them—^the case 


240 


THE SEVENTH SHOT 


“as long as a hand,” which Mrs. Parry had seen 
the girl hide in the front of her dress. In yet an¬ 
other instant the case was open, and the splendid 
piece of jewelry that was within flashed in the 
morning sunshine. It was a pendant of sapphires 
and diamonds, and it was the sort of thing that 
would be extremely becoming to Sybil Merivale. 

Crane suppressed with difficulty a sound of rage 
as he saw it. 

Barrison cut it off quickly by saying: “You told 
us you did not know what to do with it until to¬ 
day. Why to-day?” 

“Because”—Sybil took up a morning paper, 
looked at a particular place, and dropped it again— 
“because to-day I know that Miss Legaye was en¬ 
gaged to him, and that, therefore, anything that he 
had, when he died, belongs to her. I am going to 
send the pendant to Miss Legaye.” 

She closed the case with an air of finality. “Isn’t 
that what I ought to do?” she asked, half anxiously, 
looking from one to the other. 

Norman Crane, who had been sitting moodily 
staring at the floor, suddenly lifted his head and 
bent to kiss her hand. 

“My darling,” he said honestly and generously, “I 
don’t understand everything you’ve been talking 
about, but I understand that you’re my dear girl— 
my fine girl—always. And—and whatever you say 
—must be right!” 


WHAT SYBIL HAD HIDDEN 


241 


“And you, Mr. Barrison?” she persisted, looking 
at him wistfully, as she left her hand in Norman’s. 

Jim rose to go, and, standing, smiled down upon 
her. “I think your notion is an inspiration!” he 
declared. “I would give something to see Miss 
Legaye when she gets that pendant!” 

After which he departed, wondering how he was 
going to convince Lowry that the trail to Sybil 
was, professionally speaking, “cold.” 


CHAPTER XXV 


NEW DEVELOPMENTS 

H e telephoned the Blaze office, and caught Teddy 
Lucas just as he was starting out on an 
assignment. 

“Oh, it’s you,” said the reporter. “Wanted to 
tell you something about your friend Rita which 
might be useful in your business. I strolled round 
last night to the furnished rooming house where 
she and her husband hung out, and they never 
went home at all; just beat it to the train, I 
suppose. Their room was just as they’d left it, 
and full of junk. There was a shelf full of old 
photographs, and one of ’em was of two young 
girls, sisters I should say; at least, they were both 
dark. One’s evidently Rita herself, as she may have 
looked ten years ago, and the other, imless I’m 
very much mistaken, is the lady that the sob sisters 
are interviewing this morning!” 

“Not Kitty Legaye?” 

“That’s the one. Oh, and I poked about the 
files for you this morning. The Rlankley Daredevils 
were a riding and shooting show that did small 
time in the East until a year ago. Then it bust 
up, and the company scattered. Rlankley seems 
to have been a crook, for the reason for the 


NEW DEVELOPMENTS 


243 


smash-up was that he was arrested and sent to 
jail for six months! Quite a nice, snappy little 
story—what?” 

“Are you going to write it?” 

“Not my line. I’ve turned it over to a chap 
on the news stalfl” 

“I noticed that you didn’t make much out of 
last night.” 

“My editor cut out most of it; thought I was 
giving Coyne’s theater too much advertising. Well, 
that’s all I had to tell.” 

“Where is that photograph?” 

“I swiped it. Send it up?” 

“Please! And I’m no end obliged.” 

“That’s all right.” 

Barrison walked out of the booth more astonished 
than he had ever been in his life. In all the 
speculations he had made in his own mind con¬ 
cerning this twisted and unsatisfactory case, it 
had never occurred to him to connect those two 
women. Kitty Legaye and Marita Blankley! He 
recalled the two faces swiftly, and saw that there 
was a faint resemblance, though Rita’s was far the 
harder and more mature. He would not swear that 
she was the older, though; little ladies like Kitty 
rarely looked their age. Kitty and Rita! The 
more he thought of it, the more astounding it 
seemed. Of course, the first thing to do was to 
locate Wrenn. But how? He wondered if Willie 
Coster could help him. 


244 


THE SEVENTH SHOT 


He got Willie’s address easily enough from the 
theater, and went to call. He found him a little 
wan and puffy-eyed, but quite recovered, and amaz¬ 
ingly cheerful for a man who has only been sober 
a few hours! 

“Wrenn?” he repeated. “How should I know? 
He’d scarcely be staying on at Mortimer’s hotel, 
I suppose?” 

Barrison explained that Mortimer’s rooms and 
effects were in the custody of the police, and 
that the old valet would not be allowed near them in 
any case. 

“I don’t believe that he’s left town,” Willie 
said, “and I’ll tell you why. He wasn’t at all well 
fixed for money. I don’t believe Mortimer ever 
paid him any wages to speak of; whatever it 
was that held them together, it wasn’t cash. He’s 
touched me more than once, poor old beggar!” 

“You! Why you?” 

“I don’t know,” said Willie simply. “People 
always do!” 

Good little fellow! Of course, people always did. 

“And you think he’d come and borrow money 
from you, if he meant to leave town?” 

“I’d not be surprised.” 

And, as a matter of fact, he did come that very 
day and for that very reason; and Willie, having 
ascertained his address, gave it to Barrison over 
the wire. 

“I feel rather rotten about telling you, too,” he 


NEW DEVELOPMENTS 


245 


added. “I don’t know what you want him for, 
and the poor old guy is awfully cut up about 
something—scared blue, I should say. Say, Bar- 
rison, you don’t suspect Mm, do you?” 

“Lord, no! But I think he knows who did it.” 

Willie grunted uncomfortably. “Well, treat him 
decently,” he urged. 

“I’m not exactly an inquisitor in my methods, 
you know,” Jim told him. “How much money 
did you lend him, Willie?” 

“Only a ten spot,” said Willie innocently. 

Barrison laughed and said good-by. 

Within the hour, he was at the address given 
him by Coster. It proved to be a shabby, dingy 
little lodging house east of Second Avenue, and the 
few men whom the young man met slouching in 
and out were as shabby and dingy as the place, 
and had, he thought, a furtive look. Sized up 
roughly, it had a drably disreputable appearance, 
as though connected with small, sordid crimes and 
the unpicturesque derelicts of the underworld. 

In a dreary hall bedroom on the third floor, 
he finally found Wrenn. 

The old man opened the door with evident caution 
in response to Barrison’s knock, and when he saw 
the detective, his face became rigid with a terror 
w^hich he did not even attempt to conceal. Mutely, 
he stood back and let the visitor enter, closing 
the door with trembling hands. Then, still speech¬ 
less, he turned and faced him, his anguished eyes 


246 


THE SEVENTH SHOT 


more eloquent than any words could have been. 
Jim was touched by the man’s misery. He could 
guess something of what he must be suffering on 
his daughter’s accoimt. 

“Don’t look like that, Wrenn,” he said kindly. 
“I’ve only come to have a talk with you.” 

The old man bent forward with sudden eager¬ 
ness. “Then,” he faltered, “you’ve not come to 
tell me—of—her arrest, sir?” 

“No,” said Barrison; “I don’t even know where 
she is. Sit down, man; you look done up.” 

Wrenn sank onto the bed, and sat there, his 
wrinkled face working with emotion. 

“I was afraid you’d arrested her, sir!” he man¬ 
aged to say, after a moment, in broken tones. 

“You had been expecting that?” 

He nodded. “I’ve known that the—^the police 
were bound to find out some time that she’d been 
in the theater that night, and I knew what that 
would mean. She would come, though I tried so 
hard to prevent her! She would come!” 

“Wrenn,” said Barrison deliberately, “it’s a pretty 
tough question to put to you, but—did she shoot 
Mortimer?” 

Wrenn looked at him with haggard eyes. “Be¬ 
fore God, Mr. Barrison,” he said earnestly, “I 
don’t know, I don’t know! I didn’t see her shoot 
him, but—I know she meant to.” 

“You know that!” exclaimed Barrison. 


NEW DEVELOPMENTS 


247 


“I know that she had threatened him more than 
once, and—it was her pistol. You knew that, sir?”^ 
“Yes, I knew that. Go on!” 

“Fd better tell you the whole story, sir. Fm 
getting old, and it’s weighed on me too long— 
too long! If you don’t mind, sir. I’ll go back 
to the beginning.” 


CHAPTER XXVI 


wrenn's story 

I WAS born in the West,” said Wrenn, “and I 
* was fairly well educated, but while I was still 
in college—a small, fresh-water university—I got 
into bad company, and was expelled. My people 
disowned me after that, and I drifted into the sort 
of ‘adventurous’ life that attracts so many young 
men. I never really liked the idea of living 
dishonestly, but I didn’t seem good for much else. 
I had not worked hard at college, and I had no 
particular ambitions, one way or another. I suppose 
I was lazy, and I know that I was very weak. 
Eventually I became what you, sir, would call a 
crook, though for a long time I tried to gloss 
it over and pretend it was just taking a chance 
or living by my wits, and the rest of it! Then 
I got more hardened, and admitted even to myself 
that I was no better than the rest of the crowd 
I went with—a cheat, a card sharper, a petty 
criminal. Twice I was in jail for short terms, 
and I don’t think either experience improved me 
much. 

“Then I married. She was a high-class Mexican 
girl—^very beautiful. She was a Catholic, and had 
an idea of reforming me. So she did, for a short 


WRENN’S STORY 


249 


time, but the old wild longings came back. Fd 
settled down in a job as foreman on an Arizona 
ranch, and I was working hard and drawing good 
pay. We had two little girls, and things were going 
pretty well. Then my wife died, and I got reckless 
again. 

“There was a tough bunch of cow-punchers in 
our outfit, and we got to gambling a lot, and pretty 
soon I found out that it was easier and more ex¬ 
citing to win when I played crooked than when I 
played straight. And there were others who felt the 
same way. We formed a sort of combination—a 
gang. And we did very well, indeed.” 

Barrison sat and stared at the mild, respectable 
old fellow, who so patently and typically looked the 
part of a decent, sober, and trusty servant, and 
tried to visualize him as a bold, bad man of the 
wicked West. But some things are past the powers 
of the human imagination. He thought, with a sort 
of grimly humorous awe, of the strange alchemy 
of time, and shook his head, giving the problem up, 
as have better and wiser men before him. 

Wrenn went on with his story: 

“My girls were brought up in a rough-and-tumble 
way, I’m afraid. It affected them differently. The 
older Caterina—she was named for her mother— 
never took kindly to it. She was selfish and head¬ 
strong—they both were, for that matter. But I 
think Marita had more heart. Not that I ever called 
out much affection in either of them!” 


250 


THE SEVENTH SHOT 


He bent his gray head for a moment. 

“Anyway, I didn’t give them much of a bringing 
up. Marita knocked about with the boys and 
learned to ride like a puncher herself. But Caterina 
—Kitty, we called her—hated the whole life, and 
when a rich prospector came along, she threw us 
over like a Shot and went away with him. She 
was only just eighteen, but she was ambitious al¬ 
ready. She wanted to get some pleasure out of 
life, as she had said twenty times a day since she 
could speak. I—I shall not mention her name, sir 
—the name which she is known by now, for—^you 
would know it.” 

It was odd, the way he dropped so constantly 
into the respectful “sir,” and all the air and manner 
of a servant. It was clear that his was one of 
those pliable natures that can be molded by life 
and conditions into almost any shape. His instinct 
of fatherhood, his late-awakened sense of con¬ 
science, responsibility and compunction, were strug¬ 
gling up painfully through the accumulated handi¬ 
cap of a lifetime of habit. 

“I know her name,” Barrison said quietly. “You 
mean Kitty Legaye, don’t you?” 

The start that Wrenn gave now betrayed an even 
livelier terror than had yet moved him. 

“I didn’t say it!” he gasped in fright and agita¬ 
tion. “I have never said it—^never once, through 
all these years! She always made us swear we 
would tell nobody. I don’t know what she would 


WRENN’S STORY 


251 


do if she thought I had spoken! She was so 
ashamed of us—and I can hardly wonder at that, 
sir. She has done so well herself! Oh, sir, if ever 
it comes up, you—^you’ll see that she knows that 
it wasn’t I who told?” 

“I certainly will,” said the detective, pitying— 
though with a little contempt—^this father’s abject 
fear of his unnatural daughter’s displeasure. “As a 
matter of fact, I found it out by accident. I only 
told you that I knew just now to show you that 
you have nothing to conceal about her. Nor,” he 
added, entirely upon impulse, “about Mr. Dukane!” 

This time Wrenn’s jaw dropped, in the intensity 
of his astonishment. 

“You—^you know about—^him—too!” he muttered 
breathlessly. “Is there anything you—do not 
know?” 

“Several things, else I should not be here now,” 
rejoined Jim, with an inner thrill of elation over 
the success of his half-random shot. “Suppose you 
go on with your story, and then I shall know 
more.” 

The other sighed deeply, and proceeded: 

“Since you know so much, sir^ there is no sense 
in my hiding anything. Not that I think I should 
have hidden anything, in any case. As I told you, 
I am an old man, and all this has been hard to 
bear. But you don’t want me to tell about my 
feelings, sir; you want the story. 

“When Kitty had been gone a year or more. 


252 


THE SEVENTH SHOT 


and Marita was about seventeen, Nicholas Blankley 
came to the town where we lived. It was a little 
Arizona settlement, where I ran a saloon and 
gambling place. Blankley was one of us—I mean 
he was a natural-born crook, but he wasn’t a bad 
sort of fellow at that, if you know what I mean, 
sir. He was a good sport, and square with his 
pals, which is more than can be said for most of 
us! He was in the theatrical line, and had worked 
on all sorts of jobs of that kind—advance man, 
stage manager, all sorts of things. He was inter¬ 
ested in Rita from the first—saw her possibilities 
as a ‘cowgirl,’ and was fond of her, too—for she 
was young and fresh in those days, and the daring, 
reckless sort that got men. Nick got the daredevil 
name from her; that’s what he used to call her. 

“His idea was to start a sort of wild-West show, 
on the cheap; get some down-and-outers who could 
ride and shoot and who wouldn’t want much pay, 
and do short jumps at low prices. We would 
have to carry the horses, but no scenery, and no 
props to speak of, and we could use a big tent 
like the small circus people. It looked like a 
good venture, and I was tired of staying in one 
place. Marita was wild about it from the first. 
So I sold out my business, and we started. We 
made a success of it, though nothing very big, 
and kept at it fifteen years! Fifteen years! It 
seems impossible that it could have been as long 
as that, but it was. In that time Marita married 


WRENN’S STORY 253 

Nick, and we ran across Alan Morton—I might as 
well go on calling him Mortimer, though. 

“There’s no use pretending that we were run¬ 
ning our outfit strictly on the straight. We weren’t. 
We were out to get what we could out of the 
public, and we didn’t care much how we did it. 
But we didn’t do anything very bad; I, for one, was 
getting careful as time went on, and Nick had a 
notion of reforming after he married Rita. We did 
run a gambling business in connection with the 
show, and we did cheat a bit, and we did take in 
any sort of thug or gunman or escaped convict who 
had ever learned to ride, and Nick got away with 
a very good thing in phony change at one place. 
Very neat, indeed, it was, and he never had any 
trouble with it, either.” 

Wrenn spoke of this with a sort of pride which 
made Barrison shake his head again. He was the 
queerest felon with whom the detective had ever 
come in contact. 

“But as I say,” resiuned Wrenn, “we got along 
all right, and did no great harm for all those years. 
Then we struck Mortimer. He was a bad one—• 
just a plain bad one, from the very first.” 

“And I always thought you were so fond of him!” 
ejaculated the detective. 

“But I was, sir,” said the old man at once. “I 
was very fond of him, indeed! He was a—a very 
lovable person, sir, when he cared to be.” 


254 


THE SEVENTH SHOT 


Barrison, again rendered speechless, simply stared 
at him for a moment or two. 

“Go on!” he managed to articulate, after a bit. 

“Well, sir, it was this way. Mortimer’s blood 
was younger than ours, and he was more venture¬ 
some, more energetic, more daring.” 

“Like your daughter.” 

“Yes, sir,” said the ex-gambler, rather sadly. 
“Like her. There was a time when I was afraid 
that she was getting too fond of him—^he had such 
a way with women! Wherever he went there was 
trouble, as you might say. He helped the show— 
put new life into it, and he could ride—oh, well, 
no one ever rode better than he did. And you 
know how handsome he was?” 

Strangely enough, the old man’s voice choked a 
bit just there. 

“I don’t know why I always felt just the way 
I did about him,” he went on quietly. “He was 
often very rough and careless in his ways, but— 
but I was as fond of him as if he’d been my 
own son—and that, sir, is the gospel truth. 

“Mortimer had a scheme to branch out bigger, 
and get a sort of organized company together, with 
capital, and a circus arena somewhere with the 
right sort of scenery and music, and that sort of 
thing. Mr. Dukane had seen our show once, and 
had taken an interest in it—at least, had taken an 
interest in the lad—and Mortimer wrote to him 
for a loan to back the new plan.” 


WRENN’S STORY ' 255 

“Wrote Dukane—for a loan?” repeated Jim, in 
admiration. 

“Yes, he did. I felt just as surprised as you, 
sir, when he told me what he had done. And— 
to this day. I’m not sure whether it was just 
plain, pure nerve on his part, or whether he—he— 
had in mind what the result might be.” 

“Result?” 

“Yes.” For the first time the old scapegrace’s 
utterance was slow and troubled—^hardly audible. 
He would not meet Barrison’s eyes. What he said 
now seemed to be dragged up from the depths of 
his sinful and unwilling soul. 

“You know—^you must know, sir,” he said, in 
those new and halting accents, “since you know so 
much—about the deal with Dukane?” 

“I know something,” said Jim, truthfully, but 
very cautiously—his heart was beating hard. “I 
know that there was a deal at all events.” 

“It—it doesn’t sound very well—put into words, 
does it, sir?” Poor old Wrenn’s tone was tired 
and appealing. “But there! I said I was going 
to make a clean breast of it, and I might as well. 
Dukane and Mortimer fixed it up between them¬ 
selves- 

“Dukane and Mortimer only?” interrupted Bar- 
rison, with a sudden intuition. 

Wrenn’s poor, weak, tragic eyes met his piteously, 
shifted, and fell. 

“Dukane and Mortimer and—I—fixed it up. 



256 


THE SEVENTH SHOT 


sir,” he confessed humbly. “We were to double- 
cross Nick Blankley, and Dukane was to star 
Mortimer.” 

“He must have had a pretty high opinion of 
him!” exclaimed Jim Barrison wonderingly, for the 
great manager, while a shrewd gambler, was no 
plunger. 

“He knew that he had the makings of a favorite, 
sir; any one could see it. Mr. Dukane wanted 
him the way the owner of a racing stable wants 
a fine horse. He knew there was money in him 
if he was put out right. And Dukane was the man 
to do that. Anyway, that was the idea. They— 
I mean we—were to get Blankley out of the way, 
and Dukane would take care of us afterward.” 

“How do you mean get him out of the way?” 

“Oh, not kill him, sir!” Wrenn’s tone was 
virtuously shocked. “You wouldn’t think that, 
surely? It was just my way of putting it, as it 
were. No; he’d done a number of shady things, 
Nick Blankley had, and-” 

“So had you!” interpolated Jim Barrison, rather 
cruelly. 

“Oh, yes, sir! But we had—if you’ll pardon 
the expression—got away with it.” 

There it was, the point of view of the born 
criminal. If you weren’t found out, it was all 
right! Jim looked at the wretched creature before 
him, and mused on man as God made him. 

“Well?” he demanded, somewhat impatiently. 



WRENN’S STORY 257 

“Mortimer told Dukane something that Blankley 
had done; it wasn’t very much—just a fraud.” 

“And Dukane lent himself to this!” 

“He’s a business man, sir. He suggested it, I 
believe. At least, Mortimer said so.” 

No wonder the manager did not care to talk 
about it! 

“Anyway,” continued Wrenn, “it was on Mor¬ 
timer’s testimony that Blankley went to jail.” 

“For six months.” 

“You know that, sir? But it was eight months. 
He got pardon for good behavior. We”—he stum¬ 
bled over this—“we hadn’t expected it yet a while.” 

“Great Scott!” said Barrison, looking at him. “And 
you tell all this! You mean that you double- 
crossed—^betrayed your pal, your partner—got him 
out of the way, so that you could be free of him 
while you got rich in the new venture?” 

“It—it comes to that, sir; I told you it didn’t 
sound well when you put in into words. But it’s 
the truth, and I don’t care any longer who knows 
it. I’m tired. And, anyway, I think it’s more 
Dukane’s fault than ours.” 

Barrison thought so, too, but he said nothing, 
only waited in silence. 

“I came as Mortimer’s valet because there wasn’t 
much of anything else that I could do, and I swore 
I’d stick to him, and—and he liked me, and wanted 
me round him. And I did stick to him! I was 
fond of him, and I took care of him as well as I 


258 


THE SEVENTH SHOT 


knew how. No one could have looked out for him 
better—no one, sir!” 

“I believe that. It’s queer; but, no matter, I 
believe it! What were you to get out of it?” 

“When he made his hit, I was to have ten 
thousand dollars.” 

“And what did your daughter—the one married 
to Blankley, whom you had sent to jail—what did 
she say about this pleasant little arrangement?” 

Wrenn’s head drooped once more. 

“Marita was always hard to manage, sir,” he 
said, in a faint voice. “She turned against me— 
her own father, and--” 

“I should think she might!” 

“And she turned against Mortimer, and against 
Mr. Dukane, who offered her money. She said she 
would wait for Nick to come out of prison, and 
would spend the rest of her life in getting even!” 

“Well, I sympathize with her!” said Barrison 
sincerely. So that was the meaning of the tragic 
and haggard lines about her mouth and the weary 
look in her eyes. 

“Well, Wrenn,” he went on quietly, “I don’t 
know just how the blame is to be divided ip all 
this, but I imagine you’ve had almost your share 
of suffering. And Mortimer is done for. Dukane 
will get his eventually. I shall be sorry personally 
if your daughter Marita has to pay the penalty 
for the death of a rotter like the man who died 
the other night. I wish you could tell me some- 



WRENN’S STORY 259 

thing about her visit which would make her case 
look a little better.” 

Then Wrenn broke down, and, burying his head 
in his hands, cried like a child. He might have 
been a crook, a weakling, neglectful of his children 
through all the days of his life, but he was suffer¬ 
ing now. His gaunt old body quivered under the 
storm of grief that swept him. In that abase¬ 
ment and sorrow it was even possible for Rarrison 
to forget the despicable things he had just admitted. 
He was now merely an old man, bitterly punished 
not only for the sins of his youth, but those of his 
age. 

“That’s what I keep saying,” he panted at last, 
lifting his swollen eyes to the younger man’s pity¬ 
ing gaze. “I keep asking myself if there isn’t 
something that’ll clear her. Though we’ve been 
apart so long, and I was always a bad father to 
her, and a false friend to her husband, it will kill 
me altogether if I find that she is guilty of murder!’” 

“She wrote those letters—the ones threatening 
Mortimer?” 

“Yes.” 

“And she took advantage of the time permitted her 
by the hours of her act at Coyne’s to come to the 
theater that night?” 

“Yes, sir. Let me tell you just how it was. She 
slipped in while Roberts was out getting the taxi 
for Kitty.” He spoke his daughter’s name shyly 
and with embarrassment. “She came straight into 


260 


THE SEVENTH SHOT 


the dressing room—though why no one saw her 
I can’t seel She was dressed just as she had 
come from the theater, in a khaki skirt and a 
white waist. And she pulled a pistol out of her 
dress as she came in. I knew the pistol, because 
it was always a fad of hers, in all her stunts, 
to carry guns like that—^very small, and very much 
decorated, and with a letter that might be either 
an M or a W, according as you looked at it. 

“The moment she and Mortimer saw each other 
they flew out like two wild cats. I’d always tried 
to keep this from happening, because I knew that 
they were both past controlling when their blood 
was up, and they both had a lot to fight for.” 

“Both!” repeated Barrison. “I can’t see that. 
Your daughter had something to fight for, because 
of the wrong done to her husband, and incidentally 
to herself. But where was Mortimer’s grievance?” 

“Well, sir,” said Wrenn slowly, as though he 
were seriously trying to express something rather 
beyond the intelligence of his hearer, “you see— 
maybe it hasn’t struck you, sir, but, if you’ve risked 
a great deal on a thing, and find that something is 
going to interfere with it, after all, at the last 
moment, you—well, sir, you are apt to lose your 
head over it. Aren’t you?” 

Barrison laughed a trifle grimly. 

“Crooked logic,” he remarked, “but excellent— 
for the crooked kind! So you sympathize with 


WRENN’S STORY 261 

Mortimer in his annoyance at seeing your 
daughter?” 

“I don’t sympathize, sir. In a way, I may say 
I understand it. But when she pulled out that 
gun, I fell into a sweat of fear, sir, for I knew 
that she was afraid of nothing, and that if she’d 
said she’d kill him-” 

“Never mind how you felt! Tell me what hap¬ 
pened !” 

Wrenn wiped his forehead. “She went for Mor¬ 
timer, and he got to her first, and caught hold of 
her arms. He was very strong, but she struggled 
like a demon, and every minute I expected one 
of two things to happen, the pistol to go off or 
some one to hear and knock at the door. After, 
I suppose, two or three minutes like that, I pulled 
her away from him—her waist was tom in the 
struggle, you remember.” 

“I remember.” 

“And I managed to get her out of the door, 
begging her to make a run for the stage entrance 
and to get away if possible without being seen. 
It was nearly dark then, you see—not the regular 
dark scene, but all the lights were being lowered, 
because there was to be so little light on the stage.” 

There was silence for a moment, then Wrenn 
went on again: “I’ve wondered, you know, sir, 
several times, whether she and Kitty met that 
night. I’ve—^I’ve been afraid of it, I confess, be¬ 
cause I don’t believe my daughter Kitty would 



262 


THE SEVENTH SHOT 


feel much sisterly affection for Rita. She might 
even give it away if she had seen her.” 

Barrison sat plunged in deep thought for at least 
two minutes, while the shaken and troubled old 
man watched him very anxiously indeed. At last 
he spoke, not ungently: 

“Wrenn, will you give me your word that you 
will not leave this place, this address, until I see 
you again?” 

He supposed that he was rather mad in asking 
the word of a self-confessed crook like Wrenn, but 
he thought he had got to the end of his tether. At 
any rate, the old man lifted his head with quite an 
influx of pride, as he answered: 

“Yes, Mr. Barrison!” 

Jim departed, with just one determination in his 
brain—to pay Kitty Legaye a second call as fast as 
a taxi would take him to the Golden Arms! 


CHAPTER XXVII 


AN INCRIMINATING LETTER 

K itty looked very pretty and quite pathetic in 
her smartly simple mourning. She saw 
Barrison at once, and received him with a subdued 
cordiality that was the perfection of good taste 
under the circumstances. 

“What is it?” she said, in a low voice. There was 
no artificiality about her now; she was disturbed, 
apprehensive. “I know it’s something. Please tell 
me.” 

“Yes, there is something,” he said. “It’s about— 
your sister.” 

He could hear her draw in her breath. 

“My sister!” she whispered. “Marita! How did 
you know anything about her?” 

“I don’t think we need go into an account of 
that,” Jim said steadily. “As it happens, I do know 
quite a good deal about her. I know, for instance, 
that she was in the theater only a little while before 
Alan Mortimer was murdered.” 

“You know that!” she exclaimed, in unfeigned 

surprise. “I thought-” 

Then she checked herself, but it was too late; 
she saw at once what she had admitted. 

“I knew it,” said Barrison, watching her. “The 
question is—^how did you know it. Miss Legaye?” 


264 


THE SEVENTH SHOT 


She dropped her eyes and was silent until he 
felt obliged to insist: 

“I am afraid I must ask you to tell me about 
it, though I can easily suppose it isn’t very pleas¬ 
ant for you.” 

“Pleasant!” she flashed out at him then. “Think 
what a position I am in! To lose him —like that — 
and then—to find my own sister mixed up in it!” 

“You think she was mixed up in it, then?” 

“How on earth do I know?” she cried excitedly. 
“I—I—oh, Mr. Barrison, you aren’t brutal, like 
most detectives; you are a gentleman! Won’t 
you make it a little easier for me? My sister and 
I were never very fond of each other, but I can’t 
be the one to implicate her now. I can’t!” 

“It may seem very dreadful to you, of course. 
Miss Legaye. But—how can you keep silent? She 
is already under suspicion. I don’t see how you 
can avoid telling everything you know.” 

“I thought—I never dreamed—^that it would come 
to this!” she said miserably. “I thought no one 
knew of her being there except myself and—and 
my father.” She seemed to wince as she said the 
word; Jim remembered that Wrenn had said she 
was always ashamed of him. “He did not give you 
this information?” 

“He only corroborated what we already knew. 
Now, please, Miss Legaye, for all our sakes, even 
for your sister’s, tell me what you know.” 

“For my sister’s?” she repeated. 


AN INCRIMINATING LETTER 


265 


“I don’t know what you have to tell; but, seri¬ 
ously, one of the reasons why I have come to you 
is that I can’t help hoping that you can supply 
some tiny link of evidence which will help to clear 
her. If you saw her leave the theater, for in¬ 
stance-” 

She shook her head, with an air of deep de¬ 
pression. 

“I did not see her leave the theater,” she said 
quietly. “I did not see her at all.” 

“Did not see her! Then how- 

“Wait, Mr. Rarrison, and I will tell you. I 
will tell you just exactly what happened, and you 
must believe me, for it is the truth. I did not see 
my sister, but —I heard her voiceT 

Now that she had made up her mind to speak, 
the words came in a rush, as though she could 
not talk fast enough, as though she were feverish 
to get the ordeal over with. 

“When I left you to go home, I had to pass his— 
Alan’s—door, as you know. Just as I reached 
it, I heard voices inside—not loud, or I suppose 
they would have been stopped by some one, for 
the whole stage was supposed to be quiet while 
the act was on. Rut there was rather a noisy 
scene going on then—^the bandits quarreling among 
themselves over the wine, you remember—and, any¬ 
way, the voices inside the dressing room could 
only be heard by some one who was standing very 
close to the door. I stopped for a moment, in- 




266 


THE SEVENTH SHOT 


stinctively at first, and then—I heard my sister’s 
voice, panting and excited!” 

All this tallied with Wrenn’s story. “Could you 
hear what she said?” asked Barrison. 

“Only a word or two.” 

“What words?” 

She flashed him a glance of deep appeal, then 
went hurriedly on: 

“I heard her say ‘Coward and cad,’ and—and 
‘You ought to he shot, and you know it!’ That’s 
all.” 

All! It was quite enough. Barrison looked 
at her with faint pity, though he had felt at first 
that she was not sincere. She had a way of dis¬ 
arming him by unexpected evidence of true feeling 
just when he expected her to play-act. He could 
see that she was finding this pretty hard to tell. 

“What did you do, Miss Legaye?” 

“Do—I? Nothing. What was there for me to 
do? I went home.” 

“Didn’t it occur to you to try to see your sister, 
to interfere in what seemed to be such a very violent 
quarrel?” 

She shook her head vehemently. 

“No, it did not. Why should it? My sister 
and I had nothing in common. I had not seen her 
for many years; I—| did not want to see her. For 
the rest—I knew that she hated Alan Mortimer, and 
if she was talking to him at all, it seemed quite 
natural that she should talk to him like that.” 


AN INCRIMINATING LETTER 


267 


“You did not feel afraid, then—did not look 
on those chance phrases you heard as—well, a 
threat?” 

She shuddered. “Oh, no; how could I? I thought 
she was just angry and excited. She always had a 
frightful temper. How could I guess that she 
had—anything else—in her mind?” 

“So you went straight home, without waiting?” 

“Yes.” She bent her head, and added, in a low, 
troubled tone: “You will think me very selfish, very 
much a coward, Mr. Rarrison, but—^those angry 
voices made me want to get away as fast as pos¬ 
sible. I hate scenes and quarrels and unpleasant¬ 
ness of all kinds. I was thankful to get out of 
the theater, and to know that I had not had to 
meet Marita, especially in the mood she was in 
then.” 

“I see,” said Rarrison, not without sympathy. 
“And is that all—really and absolutely all—that you 
know about the matter?” 

Kitty hesitated, and then she lifted her head and 
faced him bravely. 

“No,” she said clearly, “it is not all. If you 
will wait a moment, I have something I ought to 
show you.” 

She rose and went to a desk, returning with 
an envelope. She sat down agaip and took a letter 
from this envelope, which she first read herself 
slowly and with a curious air of deliberation. Then 
she held it out to Rarrison. 


268 


THE SEVENTH SHOT 


“I am going to trust you,” she said, meeting his 
eyes proudly, “not to make use of this unless you 
have to. Wait, before you read it! When I knew 
of the horrible thing that had happened at the 
theater that night, I thought of my sister. I—I 
am afraid it is scarcely enough to say that I sus¬ 
pected her. I remembered the angry words I had 
heard her say inside the dressing room. I knew 
her ungovernable rages and the bitterness she had 
for Alan. And I knew that she was a wonderful 
shot, and that she had never got out of the habit 
of going armed. I—^well, I felt very sure what 
had happened.” 

She was breathing quickly, and speaking in a 
hoarse, strained tone. 

“I knew that there was more than a chance 
that some one else knew of her presence, and— 
I could not hear to have her arrested. I won’t 
pretend that it was all sisterly affection, but I 
think it was that, too, in a way. I couldn’t for¬ 
get that, after all, we were of the same blood, and 
had been children and young girls together. I—I 
sent her money; I had seen in the paper that she 
and her husband were playing in New York, and 
I sent it to their theater, and with it I sent a 
note, begging her to lose no time in getting out of 
town. Was it—do you think it was very wrong?” 
she asked him rather piteously. 

“It was at all events very natural,” Jim an- 


AN INCRIMINATING LETTER 269 

swered, a little surprised and touched by what she 
had told him. “And may I read this now?” 

“Yes, read it. It is Marita’s answer to me. She 
accepted the money and sent me this letter.” 

With an odd movement of weariness and sorrow, 
she turned and laid her hands upon the back of 
her chair, and her face upon them. 

The note was in the same scrawling hand that 
had made all the threats against Mortimer, that he 
knew to be that of Marita Blankley. And it ran 
thus: 

Kitty: I am glad that you have some feeling as a sister 
left in you. I did not suppose that the day would ever 
come when it would be you who would help me get out 
of trouble! I dare say at that it was only your hatred of 
having our names linked together, or having any one know 
you knew me even! Of course I was a fool to go to the 
theater last night. I might have known what would hap¬ 
pen. Now I am going to try to forget it all. I shall live 
only for my husband, and we shall get out of town as soon 
as possible! I can trust you not to talk, I know! There 
was never much love lost between us, Kitty. Your sister, 

Marita. 

Barrison sat very still after reading this. At 
last he noticed that Kitty had lifted her head and 
was watching him with an anxious face. 

“Well?” she demanded. 

“You told me not to use this unless it were 
necessary,” said Barrison very gravely. “It is 


270 


THE SEVENTH SHOT 


necessary now, Miss Legaye. I must take it to 
headquarters at once!” 

She gave a little cry. 

“Oh, I was afraid—I was afraid!” she ex¬ 
claimed. “You think it—it looks bad for her?” 

“I think,” said Jim Barrison, “that it is practically 
conclusive evidence!” 


CHAPTER XXVIII 


A STRANGE SUMMONS 

I T was barely an hour later, and Lowry and 
Barrison sat together in the inspector’s office. 
Before them lay the letter which Kitty Legaye had 
given Jim, side by side with the threatening letter 
which had come to the Mirror Theater. The hand¬ 
writing, as was to be foreseen, was identical. 
There, too, lay the photograph “swiped” by the 
reporter Lucas, showing the two young faces, so 
easily recognized now as the likenesses of Rita 
Blankley and Kitty. There was the pistol with its 
odd, non-committal initial, which had been identi¬ 
fied as Rita’s. 

A telegram was handed to Lowry, and, after 
reading it, he passed it to Jim. It was signed with 
an initial only, obviously one of the inspector’s 
regular men, and came from Indianapolis. It read: 
Got your friends. All coming back on next train. G. 
“The Blankleys?” asked Barrison. 

“Sure. They’ll be here to-morrow, and then I 
guess the case’ll be over.” 

Just as Barrison was leaving the office, the in¬ 
spector said casually: 

“By the bye, Jim—if you want to take a look 
at the place where the Blankleys lived, here’s the 


272 


THE SEVENTH SHOT 


address on a card. Fd like you to go round there 
and have a look. You’re the sort of fellow who 
gets on with the people better than the regular 
officers. Will you?” 

“Rather!” 

Jim went off with his card, wondering just what 
the inspector meant. “The sort of fellow who gets 
on with people!” That sounded as though there 
were people on the premises whom the inspector 
had failed to pump satisfactorily. He decided to 
“take a look” without delay. 

It turned out to be quite the usual type of 
furnished rooming house, kept by a faded, whining 
woman, with hair and skin all the same color. 

It seemed that she had a boy—thirteen he was, 
though he looked younger. He went to school 
mostly, hut he was a good deal more useful when 
he stayed away. “And what was the good of 
schooling to the likes of him?” said she. 

Barrison refrained from shaking her till her teeth 
rattled, and soothingly extracted the rest. 

Freddy, who appeared to be a sharp youngster 
from what she said, could always turn a pretty 
penny by acting as messenger hoy for the “ladies 
and gents” in the house. Some of them were actors; 
more of them were not. It was fairly evident that 
the place was largely patronized by denizens of 
the shady side of society. Before Jim was done 
with the woman, he had ascertained that Freddy 
had more than once acted as messenger for the 


A STRANGE SUMMONS 


273 


Blankleys, for whom, by the bye, she had a sincere 
respect. She said they were “always refined in 
their ways,” and paid cash. 

Barrison remembered that Roberts, the stage door¬ 
keeper, had reported that the threatening letters 
had been delivered by a street urchin. He asked 
to see Freddy, but he was at school—for a wonder. 
His mother appeared to resent the fact, and to look 
upon it as so many hours wasted. 

She promised that the evening would find him 
free to talk to the gentleman as much as the gentle¬ 
man desired. Barrison had given her a dollar to 
start with, and promised another after he had con¬ 
ferred with Freddy. 

When he left, he had an unsatisfied instinct that 
he had somehow missed something Lowry had ex¬ 
pected him to get. The unseen Freddy was in his 
mind as he went uptown—^in his mind to such an 
extent that he spoke of him to Tony Clay when 
he met him on Broadway and accepted that youth’s 
urgent pleading to go to a place he knew of where 
they could get a good drink. The boy was in his 
mind when, on coming out of the cafe, they found 
themselves stormbound by crosstown traffic and 
looking in at the windoiws of Kitty Legaye’s taxicab. 

Her charming, white-skinned face framed in its 
short black veil and black ruff, lighted to intense 
interest as she caught sight of them. 

“Have you any news?” she cried, in carefully 
subdued excitement. 


274 


THE SEVENTH SHOT 


Barrison could not bring himself to tell her that 
the police had caught up with her sister, and that 
she was on her way back to face her accusers. 
Kitty saw his hesitation, and thought it might be 
because Clay was present. 

“Let me give you a lift!” she said impulsively. 

Barrison accepted, after a second’s cogitation. “Go 
on to my rooms, Tony,” he said. “Fll be there 
shortly.” 

He got into the machine with Miss Legaye, and 
said to her gravely, as they began to move again: 

“Tell me, please. Miss Legaye, you had no inter¬ 
course with your sister since she came to New 
York—I mean until you sent her the money, and 
she answered you?” 

“None!” she said quickly and frankly. 

“Did your letter come by mail or by a messenger 
boy?” 

She started, and looked at him in surprise. “By 
mail,” she replied. “Why?” 

“Perfect nonsense,” he said, really feeling that 
the impulse which had made him speak was an 
idle one. “I’ve found a boy who did a lot of 
errands for her, and I wondered if you could 
identify him, that’s all.” 

She shook her head; though it was getting dusk, 
he could see her dark eyes staring at him. 

“I don’t know anything about that,” she said. 
“What sort of a boy, and what do you expect to 
prove by him?” 


A STRANGE SUMMONS 


275 


“He’s merely a witness,” Barrison hastened to 
explain. “You see, the—the letter you let me have 
corresponds exactly in writing to the letters that 
came to Mortimer, threatening him. We think this 
is the boy who carried Mrs. Blankley’s messages 
while she was in New York. That’s all. You see, 
though it’s a small link, it is one that we can’t 
entirely overlook.” 

“Have you seen him?” she asked. 

“No; I am to see him to-night,” said Barrison. 
“And—Miss Legaye, I must tell you”—he hesitated, 
for he was a kind-hearted fellow—“I ought to warn 
you that you may have an unpleasant ordeal ahead 
of you. Your sister and her husband are—coming 
back to New York.” 

She was silent for half a minute. 

“Thank you,” she said. “You have been very 
good to—^warn me. I don’t think you will ever 
know how glad I am to have met you this after¬ 
noon, Mr. Barrison.” 

He did not pretend to understand her. As they 
had gone several blocks, he said good night with 
more warmth and consideration than he had ever 
expected to feel for Kitty Legaye, and, alighting 
from the taxi, made his way directly to his rooms. 

He found Willie Coster awaiting him there, with 
his hair standing on end, and an expression of 
blank and rather appalled astonishment on his mild 
countenance. 

“Say!” he cried, as Jim entered. “I went to call 


276 


THE SEVENTH SHOT 


on the gov’nor this afternoon, and—^he’s sailed for 
London to put on three or four plays! And Fm 
out of a job! Now, what do you think of that?” 

Barrison stood still in the center of the room 
and nodded his head slowly. So Dukane had heard 
the warnings in the air, and had slipped away! 
Well, it was only a matter of time! They had 
nothing criminal against him, but—the story would 
not make a pleasant one, as noised abroad about 
the greatest theatrical manager of America. Even¬ 
tually, it would come out. However, meanwhile 
he had gone. He was sorry for Willie; sorry for 
the hundreds of actors and other employees who 
would suffer. It looked from what Willie had 
to tell that Dukane’s exit had been a complete and 
clean-cut one. He had closed up his office, put 
his road companies in subordinate hands, and— 
cleared out. 

“And I—^who have been with him all these years 
—don’t even get a company!” complained poor 
Willie. 

Barrison remembered what Dukane had said to 
him about not being able to afford to consider any 
man personally. For some reason he had chosen 
to forget Willie Coster, and, true to form, he had 
forgotten him! 

Tony Clay came in then. It was half past seven, 
nearly an hour later, when Tara reminded them 
politely of dinner. 

“We’ll go out somewhere,” said Jim, rising and 


A STRANGE SUMMONS 


277 


stretching himself. “You two shall be my guests. 
I feel that this case is practically over, and when 
I’m through with a case I feel like Willie after a 
first night—I want to relax. I don’t want—at 
least not necessarily—to get drunk, but I do want 
to-” 

Oddly enough, it was Tony Clay who interrupted 
him in a queer, abrupt ^sort of voice. He sounded 
like a man who hated to speak, but who was driven 
to it in spite of himself. 

“Look here, you fellows,” he said, “don’t let’s 
go out for dinner to-night.” 

“Why not?” demanded Barrison, in astonishment. 
“I thought you were always on the first call for a 
feed, Tony!” 

“Oh, well, maybe I am. And—I know you think 
me an awful duffer in lots of ways, Jim, but—I 
have a hunch that perhaps-” 

“That what?” demanded Jim, as he paused. 

“That something is going to happen!” declared 
Tony defiantly. “Now call me a fool if you like! 
I shan’t mind a bit, because I dare say I am one. 
But that’s my hunch, and I’m going to stick to it. 
I don’t know whether it’s something good or some¬ 
thing darned bad, but—if something doesn’t turn 
up before another hour’s out, I miss my guess!” 

They laughed at him, but they stayed. 

“Tony,” said Barrison, after the lights were 
lighted and Tara had gone to prepare dinner, “you 




278 


THE SEVENTH SHOT 


have something more than a hunch to go on. What 
is it? Out with it!” 

“Well,” said Tony unwillingly, “maybe I have 
something, but it’s too vague for me to explain, 
yet. Only—I’d be just as pleased if we three 
stuck together to-night. That’s all.” 

The boy spoke earnestly, and Barrison looked at 
him in real wonder. 

“Tony,” he said, “if you really know any¬ 
thing- 

The bell rang, and Tara brought in a telegram. 

Barrison tore it open and read: 

Am in danger. Come to me, Ferrati’s road house, two 
miles beyond Claremont, before nine. Come, for Heaven’s 
sake, and mine. G. T. 

Barrison gazed at the words in dazed stillness 
for a moment; then seized his hat. 

“Stop, Jim!” cried Tony urgently. “You must 
tell us—^you must tell me—^what is the matter?” 

Barrison shook his head as he dashed to the 
door. 

“I can’t tell any one anything!” he cried, as he 
went. “I am needed. Isn’t that enough for any 
man?” 

He was gone, and the door had slammed after 
him. 

Tony quickly picked up the telegram which had 
fluttered to the floor. “Didn’t I warn him?” he 
muttered. 



CHAPTER XXIX 


THROUGH THE NIGHT 

—on through the blue dusk of the September 
evening. 

Now that he found himself actually in the tour¬ 
ing car that he had so impetuously engaged, Jim 
Barrison found his chaotic thoughts settling into 
some sort of approximate order, if not of repose. 
He began to analyze himself and this strange ride 
through the night. 

He knew that suddenly he had forgotten the 
habit and the prompting of years; the caution that 
usually made him protect himself into a possible 
future and meet it intelligently; the restraint and 
sensible skepticism which had always made him 
consider risks and appraise them, even while being 
quite as willing to take them as any other brave 
man. He knew that he had in a single moment 
forgotten all the training and the custom of his 
mature lifetime, because a woman had asked him 
to come to her! 

A woman? That would not have been enough, 
he knew, in any other case. He was as chivalrous 
and as plucky as most men—a gallant gentleman 
in all ways; but his discretion would have aided 
his valor in any ordinary enterprise. As it was— 


280 


THE SEVENTH SHOT 


he had been deaf and blind to any and all prompt¬ 
ings save those that pounded in his ardent pulse. 
And all because a woman had sent for him! A 
woman? Say, rather, the woman! The one 
woman in the world who could so move him, 
change him, separate him from himself! 

For the first time, but with characteristic honesty 
and thoroughness, Jim Barrison acknowledged to 
his own heart that he loved Grace Templeton. 

He loved her, and he was going to her. The 
fact that she wanted him was enough. It was 
strange—some day when he was sane, perhaps, 
he would see how strange. 

The chauffeur slowed up and turned to say over 
his shoulder: 

‘T guess it’s here, sir. There’s a sign that says 
Fer—something, and that’s a road house in there, 
all right! Shall I drive in, sir?” 

“Yes; go ahead.” 

The big car crept in slowly around the curving 
drive toward the low row of not too brilliant 
lights, for this road house was set far back from 
prying eyes. There were a few trees in front, 
too, which further enhanced the illusion of privacy. 
Barrison could not help noticing that, unlike most 
road houses, this one seemed bare of patrons for 
the nonce. There was not another automobile to be 
seen anywhere about. 

He had heard of Ferrati’s before. It was one 
of those discreet little out-of-town places, far away 


THROUGH THE NIGHT 


281 


from the main road, hidden by trees, vines, and 
shrubbery, and known only to a certain selection 
among the elect. Whatever its true character, it 
masqueraded as modestly as a courtesan behind a 
cap and veil. Proper to the last degree was Fer- 
rati’s; any one could go there. The tone was 
scrupulously correct—if you frequented its main 
rooms. And the authorities saw nothing wrong 
with it. Ferrati himself saw to that! 

But there were stories—^Barrison had heard a 
few of them—^which suggested that the resort, like 
some people, had a side not generally known to 
the public. It was even said that it was a head¬ 
quarters for a certain blackmailing concern much 
wanted by the police; that all manner of under¬ 
world celebrities could be sure of a haven there 
in off hours, and that the bartender was nearly as 
skillful at knock-out drops as he was at mixed 
drinks. 

How, Jim asked himself, had Grace Templeton 
ever got into these surroundings? Of course he 
sensed something queer about it all, and he could 
not help wondering despairingly whether that un¬ 
quenchable thirst for adventure to which she had 
borne witness had been the means of bringing her 
inadvertently into such an unsavory neighborhood. 

He did not dismiss the car, but told the man to 
wait, and, running up the short flight of steps 
at the front door, asked the rather seedy-looking 


282 THE SEVENTH SHOT 

maitre d’hotel, or whatever he was, for Miss Tem¬ 
pleton. 

The man did not seem to understand him, but a 
second individual, who was clearly his superior in 
position, made his appearance, and greeted Bar- 
rison politely and with some air of authority. 

“Is your name Ferrati?” 

“Giovanni Ferrati, if the signor pleases.” He 
bowed, but Barrison had the impression that the 
man was watching him. He was dark and foreign 
looking, with a face like a rat. 

“The signor wished-” 

“I am to meet Miss Templeton here,” said Bar¬ 
rison shortly. 

The rat-faced one’s expression cleared from a 
dubious look to delighted relief. So far as he was 
able, he beamed upon the newcomer. 

“Ah, that is well! If the signor would come 
this way-” 

Jim followed where he led, with an unaccount¬ 
able sense of distrust and discomfort gaining place 
in his breast. For the first time, a genuine doubt 
assailed him. Suppose it were a trick, a trap? 
Nothing since he had first entered this “joint,” as he 
savagely termed it to himself, had put him in any 
way at his ease. And at last he was conscious 
of a well-developed instinct of suspicion. It was 
not only what he had known before—^that Grace 
was in trouble; it was a conviction that the whole 
situation was an impossible one—false, dangerous. 




THROUGH THE NIGHT 


283 


utterly unlike what he had been expecting. Sup¬ 
pose—he hardly dared to put his thoughts into 
words. He only knew that he found his environ¬ 
ment singularly menacing. He could not tell what 
it was that was in the air, but it was something 
wicked and deadly. He wished that he had waited 
long enough to verify that telegram! If Grace 
Templeton had not sent it- 

“This way, signor, if you please!” said the rat¬ 
faced man called Ferrati. 

At the end of a dim and unsavory corridor, he 
turned the knob of a door. 

“The lady awaits you, signor!” he said, with a 
remarkably impleasant smile. 

The room within was highly lighted, as Jim 
Barrison could see, even through the small space 
where it was held open by Ferrati. He walked 
in promptly. 

On the instant, the lights were switched out—at 
the very second of his entrance. He could see 
nothing now; it was pitch dark. 

Mingled with his rage was a perfectly human 
mental comment: “You idiot; it serves you right!” 

For of course he was in a trap—a nice, neat 
trap, such as any baby might have walked into! 

The door closed behind him quickly, and some¬ 
thing straightway clicked. 

He was locked into this mysterious room in this 
strange and murderous resort, and the darkness 
about him was that of the grave. 


CHAPTER XXX 


THE WHISPER IN THE DARK 

D arkness is a very strange thing. It is prob¬ 
ably as strong and mysterious an agent when 
it comes to transmuting—and to deceiving—as 
anything on this earth. Nothing known to man is 
the same in the dark as at another time, and under 
the light. 

It seemed to Jim Barrison that a series of pic¬ 
tures were being painted upon that cruel, that 
unfeeling, darkness. He had never, perhaps, been 
so close to himself before. The possibilities of 
human pain had certainly never been so apparent 
to the eyes of his mind. For suddenly, and with 
terrible clearness, he recalled his conversation with 
Grace Templeton, and seemed again to hear her 
say: 

“Suppose the traveler who showed him the real 
gourd of water should refuse to share it, after all? 
What do you think would be likely to happen 
then?” 

And once more he could hear himself reply: 

“I should think the thirsty man would be quite 
likely to shoot him!” 

And then—^then—what was it she had said, with 
that enigmatical smile of hers? 


THE WHISPER IN THE DARK 


285 


“Yes, that’s just what might happen 1” 

YeSy that's just what might happen! She had 
said that. How much had she meant by it, and 
how much had she meant it? He did not know. 
But, though he was not willing to apply it too 
closely as a key to his present position, he could 
not bring it to mind without a strange chill. For, 
if there were women of that kind, he was sure that 
she—lovely and idealistic as she was—^was one of 
them. 

He stood still, perfectly still, straining his ears, 
since it would have been utterly vain to have 
strained his eyes. For a time he even heard noth¬ 
ing. Yet he was poignantly conscious of another 
presence there—^whose? 

He was afraid to permit himself much in the 
way of conjecture; that sharp and taunting memory 
was still too fresh with him. He would rather 
a thousand times over that he had been tricked and 
trapped by some desperate criminal determined to 
torture him to death than that she should have 
thus deliberately led him here, should have thus 
cruelly traded upon her certain knowledge of his 
interest in her! The thing would not bear thinking 
of; it could not be! 

He scarcely breathed as he stood there, motion¬ 
less, waiting for that other’s first movement. He 
was so tensely alert that it seemed strange to 
him that the other could even breathe without his 


286 


THE SEVENTH SHOT 


hearing it. He wished for a revolver, and cursed 
himself for the precipitancy which had carried him 
off without it. 

And then he heard—what he had dreaded most 
of all to hear—^the faint, almost imperceptible rustle 
of a woman’s dress! 

It was the veriest ghost of a rustle, as though 
the very lightest and thinnest of fabrics had been 
stirred as delicately as possible. 

But—it was a woman, then! 

“Who is it?” he demanded, and his voice to his 
own ears seemed to resound like an experimental 
shout in one of the world’s famous echoing caverns. 

And the answer came in a whisper—a woman’s 
whisper: 

“Hush!” 

Then there was a long, blank, awful silence, 
and then the rustle once again. And again that 
sibilant breath voiced: 

“Can you tell where I am standing?” 

“Who are you?” Barrison repeated, though drop¬ 
ping his own voice somewhat. 

“Please don’t speak so loud!” He could barely 
hear the words. “I am Grace Templeton—surely 
you know?” 

“Why are you whispering?” 

“Because we may be overheard. Because there 
is danger, very great danger!” 

“Danger—from whom?” 


THE WHISPER IN THE DARK 


287 


“Come closer, please! I am so afraid they will 
hear! Can’t you place me at all? If you are 
still at the door—are you?” 

“Yes.” 

“Then come forward to the right, only a few 
steps, and then wait.” 

Now it has already been pointed out in these 
pages that the dark is paramountly deceptive. Bar- 
rison could not accurately locate the woman who 
was whispering to him; neither could he entirely 
identify the voice itself. If you will try the ex¬ 
periment of asking a number of different people 
to assemble in pitch darkness and each whisper the 
same thing, you will probably find that it is pain¬ 
fully easy to mistake your bitterest enemy for 
your very nearest and dearest friend. Jim Bar- 
rison had no soul thrill, nor any other sort of 
evidence, to assure him that the woman in the 
dark room was Grace Templeton; on the other 
hand, there was nothing to prove her any one else. 

And yet—and yet—^he had a curious, creeping 
feeling of dread and suspicion. He did not trust 
this unknown, unidentified, whispering voice in the 
darkness. 

It came again then, like the very darkness itself 
made audible; insistent, soft, yet indefinitely sin¬ 
ister : 

“Come! Come here to me! Only a few steps for¬ 
ward and just a little to the right.” 


288 


THE SEVENTH SHOT 


Barrison took one single step forward, and then 
stopped suddenly. 

He did not know what stopped him. He only 
knew that he was stopped, as effectually and as 
imperatively as if some one in supreme authority 
had put out a stern, restraining hand before him. 

And then, all at once, something happened—one 
of those tiny things that sometimes carry such 
huge results on their filmy wings. The whisper 
came again, more urgently this time: 

“Aren’t you going to come to me, when I’m in 
danger?” 

When people are bom in the West, they carry 
certain things away from it with them, and it 
matters not how long they are gone nor in what 
far parts they choose to roam, they never get rid of 
those special gifts of their native soil. One is the 
slightly emphasized “r” of ordinary speech. No 
Easterner can correctly mimic it; no Westerner can 
ever get away from it except when painstakingly 
acting, and endeavoring to forget that to which 
he was born. The two r’s in the one brief 
sentence were of the nature to brand any one 
as a Westerner. And Barrison knew that Grace 
Templeton had never spoken with the ghost of such 
an accent in her life. Who was it whom he had 
heard speak recently who did accentuate her r’s 
like that! Marita did! And one other—^though 
much more delicately and- 



THE WHISPER IN THE DARK 


289 


He remembered, with a throb of excited pleas¬ 
ure on dismissing a hideous suspicion from his 
mind, and on entering normally into the joys of 
chance and danger, that he had one weapon which 
might turn out to be exceedingly useful in his 
present predicament. He had come away without 
his gun, but he had with him the tiny pocket 
lamp, the electric torch of small dimensions but 
great power, which had been the joy of his life 
ever since it had been given him. Like all nice 
men, he was a child in his infatuated love of new 
toys! 

He drew the little cylinder from his coat pocket 
cautiously, and, with the same exultant feeling 
that an aviator doubtless knows when he drops a 
bomb on a munitions factory, he flashed it. 

The result was surprising. 

Straight in front of him was a square, black 
hole in the floor. If he had taken that step forward 
and to the right which she had urged, he would 
have gone headlong to practically certain death. 
The human brain, being quicker than anything else* 
in the universe, reminded him that there had been 
some unexplained disappearances in this neighbor¬ 
hood. But he was now chiefly concerned in finding 
out who the woman was. Before he could flash 
his light in her face she had flung herself upon 
him. 

There was no more pretense about her. She 
was grimly, fiercely determined to force him to- 


290 


THE SEVENTH SHOT 


ward that wicked, black hole into eternity. Not 
a single word did she utter; she did not even call 
for assistance, though, since the people in this 
house were her friends or tools, she might well 
have done so. She seemed consumed by one single, 
burning desire: to thrust him with her own hands 
into the pit. 

Never had Jim struggled against such ferocity of 
purpose. She was like a demon rather than a 
woman, in the way she writhed between his hands, 
and forced her limited strength against his trained 
muscles in the bold and frantic effort to annihilate 
him. And, in that dense blackness, it was a toss-up 
as to who would win. The woman herself might 
easily have gone headlong into the very trap she 
had planned for him. But she did not seem to 
think or to care for that; her whole force of 
being was centered, it seemed, in the one sole 
purpose of his destruction. 

At that furious, struggling moment, Barrison be¬ 
came convinced of an odd thing. He was perfectly 
certain, against all the testimony of all the world, 
that the woman who fought him so murderously 
was not only the woman who had planned his own 
death that night, but also the criminal for whom 
they were so assiduously seeking. He was sure 
that his hands at that very minute grasped the 
person who had killed Alan Mortimer. 

It seemed to last forever, that silent, breathless 
struggle in the dark. But finally he got her hands 


THE WHISPER IN THE DARK 


291 


pinioned behind her in one of his, and deliberately, 
though with a beating heart, raised his electric 
torch and flashed it full in her face. 

Mutinous, defiant, almost mad with rage for the 
moment, the dark eyes of Kitty Legaye blazed back 
at him. 


CHAPTER XXXI 


TONY DOES HIS BIT 

T hings happened very rapidly in Jim Barrison’s 
rooms after he had made his hasty departure. 
Tony Clay stood for a moment, holding the telegram 
in his hand; and then, tossing it to Willie Coster, he 
made a jump for the telephone. There he called 
Spring 3100, and, getting his number, demanded In¬ 
spector Lowry in a voice that might have been the 
president’s for authority, and a Bloomingdale in¬ 
mate’s for agitation. 

“Now, now,” came the deep, official tones from 
the other end of the wire; “hold your horses, my 
friend! Is it an accident or a murder?” 

“It’s probably both,” stormed Tony. 

He had the inspector on the wire, and was pour¬ 
ing out his tale, trying his best to keep himself co¬ 
herent with the ever-present picture in his brain of 
Jim in trouble. Tony was not one of the most in¬ 
spired of detectives, but he was as good a friend 
as ever a man had, and he loved Jim. 

It happened that Lowry had a weakness for 
Jim himself. Also, the story told by Tony was, 
though wild, certainly one to make any police official 
sit up and take notice. Ferrati’s, as has already 
been suggested, was not looked upon favorably by 
the police. 


293 


TONY DOES HIS BIT 

He told Tony Clay that he would come up to 
Ferrati’s himself with a couple of men. 

“And we’ll stop for you,” he said, meaning to be 
most kind and condescending. 

Tony retorted hotly; “Fm leaving for Ferrati’s 
now! I can’t wait for the police department to 
wake up!” 

He hung up viciously and turned to face Willie 
Coster, also Tara, who, though less demonstrative 
than these Occidentals, was clearly about as anxious 
as either of them. 

“Tara, get a taxi!” said Tony briefly. 

“Immediate, honorable sir!” 

Tara’s alacrity was rather pathetic. Willie Cos¬ 
ter looked after him with a kindly nod. 

“D’you know,” he remarked, in a low tone, “that 
Jap is just as keen to help Barrison as we are. 
You’ll find when we start out after him he won’t 
let himself be left behind.” 

Tony turned to scowl at him in bewilderment. 

“When ‘we’ start out after him!” he repeated. 
“You aren’t expecting to spring anything of that 
sort, are you?” 

Willie Coster looked at him a moment only. Then 
his small, pinched face blazed suddenly into fiery 
red. 

“Say,” he snapped, “do you think you’re the only 
he-man on the premises? And do you suppose that 
no one else is capable of a friendly feeling for Bar¬ 
rison, and a natural wish to help him out of a mess. 


294 


THE SEVENTH SHOT 


except just your blessed self? Because, if that’s 
what you think, you forget it—quick!” 

Tony felt abject, and would have apologized, too, 
but a snorting arose in the street below them, and 
Tara announced the taxi which, in some inscrutable 
way, he had maneuvered there in more than record 
time. 

Tony recalled what Willie Coster had said. 

“Tara,” he said abruptly, “you are fond of Mr. 
Barrison, I know.” 

“Yes, sir,” Tara said. 

“We think Mr. Barrison is in danger. We are 
going to see what we can do for him. Now re¬ 
member, there isn’t a reason in the world why you 
should come too, only-” 

The Jap spoke in his elaborately polite way: 

“Honorably pardon, sir! There is reason.” 

“But-” Tony was beginning, but he never 

finished. He saw the reason too plainly. Tara, like 
himself and like Willie, was too fond of Barrison to 
stay away. That was reason enough. 

“All right, Tara, you come along!” he said, turn¬ 
ing away. And his voice might have been a bit 
husky. 

“Where, first?” said Coster, as they entered the 
taxicab. And there were three of them, too! 

Tony gave the name of the hotel where Miss Tem¬ 
pleton lived, which was not so far away. Once 
there, he left his companions in the taxi and went 
up alone to interview the lady. In his hand, tightly 



TONY DOES HIS BIT 


295 


crumpled with the vehemence of his intense feeling, 
he kept the telegram which had come for Jim Bar- 
rison, signed with her initials. 

He penciled a note to Miss Templeton which made 
her send for him as soon as she received it. 

They knew each other, hut she was so excited 
that she did hardly more than acknowledge his 
hasty bow. 

“Mr. Clay,” she exclaimed, “what does it all 
mean? I know you would not have sent me this 
message without a reason! You say: ‘Mr. Barri- 
son is in grave danger because of you. Will you 
help me to save him?’” She confronted Tony 
with pale cheeks and wide eyes. “Now, Mr. Clay, 
you know that such a thing is impossible! How 
could Mr. Barrison be in danger on my account 
without my knowing it? And I swear to you 
that I can think of nothing in all the world which 
could subject him to danger—because of me! Nev¬ 
ertheless, I cannot let a thing like this go—no 
woman could! If there is danger to Mr. Barrison, I 
should know it! If it is, in some way, connected 
with me, I should know it all the more, and care 
about it all the more! What is it?” Suddenly she 
dropped the rather haughty air which she had as¬ 
sumed and clasped her hands like a frightened child. 
“Oh, Mr. Clay, you know that I would do anything 
to help him! What is it? What is it?” 

By way of answer, Tony handed her the tele¬ 
gram. 


296 


THE SEVENTH SHOT 


After she had read it, she held it in rigid fingers 
for a moment; it seemed they were not able to drop 
it. She looked at Tony Clay. 

“And, receiving this,” she murmured faintly, “he 
—^went?” 

“He went,” answered the young man, “so fast 
that we could not stop him; though I, for one, 
suspected something shady, and had warned him 
he must be on his guard.” 

It is probable that in all his life Tony Clay never 
understood the look that flamed in the woman’s face 
before him now. In that strange combination of 
emotions was pain and fear, but th^re was also joy 
and trimnph. 

“So he cared like that!” she murmured. 

And then, before Tony Clay could even be sure 
that she had uttered the words, she had changed 
again to a practical and utilitarian person. She 
seized a long raincoat from the back of a chair and 
said immediately: 

“I am ready. Shall we go?” 

Tony glowered at her. Another one? Aloud he 
remarked: 

“If you will merely testify that you did not send 
that telegram-” 

She looked as though she would have liked to 
slap him in her exasperation. 

“Of course I didn’t?” she raged. “But what 
has that to do with this situation? I thought you 
said he was—^in danger?” 



TONY DOES HIS BIT 


297 


“I am afraid he is. Very well, ma’am; if you 
must come, you must. We have rather a larger 
crowd than I had expected at first.” 

It was impossible for him to avoid an injured 
tone. 

However they felt about it, Miss Templeton went 
with them. When the light of passing street lamps 
fell upon her face, it had the look of an avenging 
angel. 

On the way, she insisted that Tony should tell 
them what had made him suspicious as lo danger 
awaiting Barrison that night. And after a little 
hesitation he told—this: 

“You know Jim had put me onto the Legaye end 
of the case—had suggested my talking to the maid, 
and all that. Well, I did it, and, as a matter of fact, 
I got in deeper than I expected to.” He looked at 
each of them defiantly, but no one seemed disposed 
to sit in judgment, so he continued: “Maria—she’s 
quite a nice girl, too, and don’t let anybody forget 
it—told me to-day that her lady was terrifically 
upset about something.” 

“When was that?” demanded Coster. 

“Late in the afternoon, just before I came to din¬ 
ner—^to the dinner that didn’t come off. Jim and I 
parted when he took a ride in Miss Legaye’s taxi, 
and he left me to come on to join him alone.” 

“Did you come straight on?” 

“Yes,” said Tony, “I did. But something hap- 


298 


THE SEVENTH SHOT 


pened on the way, and that has given me the clew 
to—^to—^what’s taking us out here.” 

“Well, tell it, for Heaven’s sake!” 

“Well, it seems,” said Tony unwillingly, yet with 
the evident realization that he was doing the right 
thing, “it seems that Miss Legaye was in the habit 
of going shopping with her maid—Maria—and of 
dropping her when she was tired—I mean when 
Miss Legaye was tired, not Maria—and leaving her 
to come on with packages and so on. She had done 
that to-day. Just after she and Jim Barrison had 
gone on, I met Maria, and I stayed with her, too”— 
defiantly—“until after the time I should have been 
at Jim’s rooms 1” 

“Not very long, was it?” 

“Not more than half an hour. I’m sure.” 

“And in that time, what could have happened 
that-” 

“Nothing happened. Nothing could have hap¬ 
pened. It was only that—that ” Tony swal¬ 
lowed hard, and then went on courageously: “She 
asked me when her mistress had gone home, and I 
told her just a few minutes before. Then she said 
she must telephone her, if we were to have a mo¬ 
ment together. She said that she could easily make 
out an excuse. And, though I had no—no par¬ 
ticular interest in Maria,” faltered poor Tony un¬ 
happily, “I couldn’t see what I could do to get out 
of that! And—and she did telephone, and when 
she came back from telephoning,” he said, speaking 



TONY DOES HIS BIT 


299 


carefully, and evidently trying his best to make the 
thing sound as commonplace as possible, “she told 
me that her mistress had just come in, and that 
she was so excited she could scarcely speak, and 
she wanted Maria at once, and that she had told 
Maria that if ever she had cared anything about 
her, she must be prepared to stand by her now— 
and to hurry—hurry—^hurry—dhurry! That’s what 
poor Maria kept repeating to herself. And that’s 
what I had in my mind when I went into Jim’s 
rooms, for it was the last thing in my mind. 

‘T was afraid then and there of Miss Legaye’s 
doing something—queer—^but before I had a chance 
to tell Jim w'hat I thought—^that message came, and 
he was off!” 

Almost directly they were at Ferrati’s and con¬ 
fronting Ferrati himself, who looked alarmed at the 
sight of these visitors. 

It required small astutenes to see that his party 
was an unexpected one, and that the unexpected¬ 
ness was only rivaled by the lack of welcome. 

Finding that ordinary and moderately courteous 
inquiries were only met with extreme haziness of 
perception, Tony saw that he would have to push 
his way in. 

He glanced over his shoulder and saw that Willie 
Coster expected the same result; also that Tara 
looked mildly pleased. Doubtless he was pondering 
enjoyably upon jujutsu and what it could accom- 


300 


THE SEVENTH SHOT 


plish. Considered collectively, the party was not 
one to be ignored. 

As though to put an exclamation point after the 
sound sense of the rest, Miss Templeton, who had 
been extremely quiet through it all, suddenly drew 
out a revolver from the pocket of her raincoat. 
Tony thrilled, for it was the one that he had seen 
her buy. 

“Before we fight our way in,” she said amiably 
enough, “suppose we try just walking in? I 
don’t believe that these poor creatures will make 
much trouble.” 

She smiled, not too pleasantly, at the poor 
creatures. 

But they did! 

They made so much trouble that it took the lot of 
them fifteen minutes to get to that dark inner room 
where Jim Barrison was imprisoned. By that time 
Lowry and three good men had arrived in a racing 
car, and by the same time, Tony Clay had been put 
out of business by two of Ferrati’s “huskies.” 

“Never mind about me!” he had implored them. 
“Get Jim out!” 

They did. And they found Jim blinking at them 
out of that awesome darkness, holding Kitty in an 
iron grip. He was rather white, but he tried to 
smile. 

“Suppose you take her?” was his first utterance. 
“She’s one handful.” 


TONY DOES HIS BIT 301 

Kitty, once in the hands of the officers, shrugged 
her shoulders and changed her tune. 

“What a lot of fools you arel” she exclaimed 
contemptuously. “You had the clew in your hands 
a dozen times over! It was only to-day that this 
fellow got onto it, though, and so”—again she 
shrugged her shoulders—“I had to finish him, if I 
could, hadn’t I?” 


CHAPTER XXXII 


THE LOST CLEW 

F ERR ATI was the selfsame man who had first in¬ 
duced Kitty to run away from her home, her 
father, and her sister. As she had progressed, she 
had grown away from him and his evil influences; 
but, as often happens in a situation of this sort, 
when she found herself in trouble of a criminal 
nature, she had gravitated most naturally back to 
the man who, she was sure, could help her out of 
her problem. 

Face to face with each other in the inspector’s 
own oflice, neither Kitty nor Ferrati had the nerve 
to hold out; between them, as a matter of fact, they 
cleared up sundry police mysteries which had wor¬ 
ried the heads and irritated the underlings for 
months past. 

The trap set for Jim Rarrison elucidated a good 
many mysteries and showed the way in which 
several rich men had disappeared from the face of 
the earth. The trapdoor was not in any sense a 
secret one; it had been seen by half a dozen police¬ 
men during the energetic investigations of Ferrati 
and his establishment which had gone on from time 
to time ever since it had become generally known 
that men who subsequently disappeared had been 


THE LOST CLEW 


303 


“last seen dining at Ferrati’s.” But the explanation 
had been so simple and there had been so little at¬ 
tempt, seemingly, at subterfuge or evasion, that the 
law had been put off the scent so far as that trap¬ 
door was concerned. 

The room in which it was situated was a kind of 
pantry, and directly under it was a part of the 
cellar. Like many restaurant keepers, he had 
bought an old country house and made it over into a 
resort. Thrifty Italian that he was, he had made 
as few and as inexpensive alterations as possible in 
the actual structure of the building, and had found 
it cheaper to put in a trapdoor and a ladder than to 
build a complete staircase reaching to his cellar. 
This was the explanation that he gave the police, 
and it was probably true, and was assuredly logical. 

What became apparent now, however, was that 
the trapdoor had served other ends than that of 
legitimate cafe service. What could be easier than 
to inveigle a man into the room and get rid of him 
through the cellar door? As for the disposal of 
the body, that, too, was quaintly provided for and 
covered by Ferrati’s business. Every morning, just 
at dawn, the restaurant garbage was carted away. 
It was not difficult to carry other and more ghastly 
things away at the same time; and the road is lonely 
at that hour. A couple of discreet henchmen could 
quite easily drop something over the cliffs in the 
direction of the river. But, after all, this was a 
secondary matter for the moment. 


304 


THE SEVENTH SHOT 


The great thing was that they knew now who 
had fired the seventh shot. It only remained to find 
out how it had been done, for even after Kitty had 
admitted it, the thing seemed impossible from the 
facts which they had securely established. 

She did not in the least mind telling them about 
it. She told her story with simplicity and direct¬ 
ness. In her curious, calculating little head there 
was not the slightest trace of regret or remorse for 
what she had done. Barrison, watching her, remem¬ 
bered his talk with Wrenn, and seemed to descry in 
the daughter the same strange bias he had noted 
in the father; the same profound selfishness, the 
same complete absence of conscience where her own 
wrongdoing was concerned. It also appeared clear 
that only one person had ever sincerely touched the 
heart of either of them, and that was the man who 
was dead. 

There was one thing that Kitty did truly grieve 
for, and that was Mortimer’s death. Whether it 
was because she had loved him, or because in losing 
him, she had lost the chance of marrying and so 
squaring her somewhat twisted and clouded past, 
would never be known to any one but herself. That 
she did grieve, however odd it might appear, was 
certain. 

The detectives exchanged glances of wonder as 
they realized how simple the case had been from 
the very first, once given the clew. As for the 
clew itself, Barrison had had it once, but had lost 


THE LOST CLEW 


305 


it. It was, as he had at one time suspected, that 
red evening coat. It had left the theater exactly 
when it was supposed to have left; only—it was 
not Kitty who had worn it! 

It was the morning after the episode at Ferrati’s, 
and Lowry was holding an informal inquiry. None 
of them who were present would ever forget it—not 
the enchanting picture which the self-confessed 
murderess presented as she sat there with a poise 
that her situation could not impair, looking exquisite 
in the swathing black which she wore for the man 
whom she had herself killed! 

Inspector Lowry was, for once in his life, totally 
at a loss, absolutely nonplused. To Barrison, and 
the other men who knew him well, his blank amaze¬ 
ment in the face of the phenomenon represented by 
Kitty Legaye was, to say the least of it, entertaining. 

At last he remarked, still staring at her as though 
hypnotized: “It is a most remarkable case! Miss 
Legaye, if you feel the loss of this man so deeply 
—and I am convinced that you do, in spite of the 
paradox it presents—^why, if you don’t mind, did 
you shoot him?” 

She flashed him a scornful glance. “Shoot him!” 
she repeated vehemently. “You surely don’t suppose 
for one moment that I meant to shoot him?” 

“But-” the inspector was beginning. 

“Shoot himr she rushed on, with a different em¬ 
phasis. “Of course I didn’t! It is the sorrow of 
my life that it turned out in that horrible manner. 



306 


THE SEVENTH SHOT 


No; it was that Merivale woman whom I meant 
to shoot! He was making love to her, and I 
couldn’t stand it! I aimed at her, but—^but—I sup¬ 
pose he was closer to her than I thought, and—it 
happened I” 

She bit her lips and clenched her small hands. 
They could all see that it was only with the great¬ 
est difficulty and by the most tremendous effort that 
she was able to control the frenzy of her rage and 
despair over that fatal mischance. 

“At that, I hadn’t planned to kill even her,” she 
went on, after a moment or two. “Not then, at any 
rate. But when the opportunity came, sent straight 
from heaven as it seemed,” said this astounding, 
moralless woman most earnestly, “I simply could 
not help it.” 

“Suppose you tell us what actually happened.” 

“Why not, now? What I told him”—she looked 
at Jim Barrison—“was all quite true up to the point 
where I stopped at Alan’s door and heard my sis¬ 
ter’s voice. The rest, of course, was different. 
What I really did then was to wait, listening to the 
struggle and quarrel inside until I could make out 
that my—^my father was succeeding in separating 
them. The door opened and Marita almost stag¬ 
gered out, with her waist all torn and her hair half 
down. She looked dreadful, and I was so afraid 
some one would see her. 

“At the same second I saw the pistol lying just in¬ 
side the door. Alan said: ‘Shut that doorl’ Neither 


THE LOST CLEW 


307 


he nor my father had seen me. I bent down quickly 
and, reaching in, picked up the pistol. The next 
second my father had shut the door very quietly 
and quickly, for no lights were to be shown in the 
theater. 

“I still had no real intention of using the thing 
that night. I just picked it up, acting on an impulse. 
Besides, I didn’t think that my sister was in any 
state to handle it then; so I kept it, and did not 
give it to her. Then I pulled off my evening coat 
and made Marita put it on.” 

“One moment, with Inspector Lowry’s permis¬ 
sion,” Barrison interrupted. “All that must have 
taken time. Miss Legaye, and there were people all 
around you. I myself was only a short distance 
away.” 

“You were standing up stage,” she informed him 
tranquilly, “and the stairway going to the second 
tier of dressing rooms masked Alan’s door from 
where you were. As for the time, it took scarcely 
a minute; it happened like lightning. Such things 
take time to tell about, but not to do.” 

“And in giving your sister your wrap, you were 
trying to shield her, and were moved by sisterly af¬ 
fection?” suggested the inspector sympathetically. 

“Indeed I was not!” snapped Kitty resentfully. 
“I never had the least affection for my sister! I 
was moved by the fear of a lot of talk and scandal. 

I wanted to get her out of the theater, and out of my 
life entirely, and the quickest way I could think of 


308 THE SEVENTH SHOT 

was to give her my coat and send her home in my 
taxi.” 

“Why did you not go with her?” 

“Haven’t I told you I wanted to get rid of her? 
I didn’t think of anything hut that for a moment, 
and then—^then something else came over me, after 
she had gone.” 

Her tone had changed. It was plain that she was 
no longer merely narrating something; she was liv¬ 
ing it again. She was again stirred by what had 
stirred her on that fateful night; no eloquence in 
the world could have made her hearers so vividly 
see what she saw, nor so gravely appreciate what 
she had felt, as the expression which she now wore 
—a terrible, introspective expression, the look of one 
who lives the past over again. 

“Sybil Merivale was waiting for him at the top of 
the little flight of steps, and—I had the pistol still in 
my hand. Even then I was not perfectly determined 
on killing her. I hated her and I feared her, but I 
had not planned anything yet. There was a dark 
scarf over my arm; I slipped that over my head 
so that it shaded my face from any chance light, and 
I slipped across the few feet of distance and stood 
just below her, close by the steps. 

“Then Alan came out of his room. There was no 
light, for he had had them put out, of course, ac¬ 
cording to Dukane’s directions, for the dark scene 
which was almost on. I stood so near that I could 
have touched him as he went up two steps and 


THE LOST CLEW 309 

stopped, and laughed under his breath and spoke to 
her.” 

Again she fought for self-control, and again she 
won it, though her face looked older and harder 
when she began to speak once more. 

“He was trying to make love to her, and she 
would have nothing to do with him.” 

“Didn’t that make you hate her less?” queried 
Lowry, being merely a man. 

“It made me hate her more! She was throwing 
aside something which I would have risked any¬ 
thing to get! I went mad for the moment. Then 
the shots began, and it was pitch dark. I—I found 
myself lifting my hand slowly, and pointing it. I 
knew just where she was standing. It seemed to 
me I could scarcely miss. When I had heard what 
I thought was the fifth shot, I fired. I suppose I 
was excited and confused, and counted wrong. I 
meant my shot to come at the same time as the last 
shot; that would have given me a longer time to get 
away. As it was, she screamed, and I was sure 
I had hit her. And I was very glad! 

“But I had no time to make sure. There was 
commotion and confusion, and I had to get away. 
I did not dare to go out through the stage entrance 
where there was a light. I knew my way to the 
communicating door, and I took a chance that the 
lights would not go up until I was through it. I 
brushed past the man who was supposed to guard 
it, in the dark, but I suppose he was too excited to 


310 


THE SEVENTH SHOT 


notice, I got through and ran down past the boxes 
to the front of the house. People were already be¬ 
ginning to come out, and there was a lot of con¬ 
fusion. I had my dark scarf over my head, so I 
easily passed for one of the women in the audience 
who had turned faint and wanted air. I walked 
quietly out of the lobby and hailed a taxi. That’s 
all.” 

“What did you do then?” 

“I went home—to my hotel. I didn’t go in by the 
front way, but through the side entrance, and 
slipped into my room without meeting any one. I 
sent out for some chloral, for I knew I could not 
sleep without it, but I would not let my maid see 
me, for she would have noticed that I was without 
my coat.” 

“And the coat?” 

“Marita sent it back to me in the morning before 
Maria came to the door. I put it on a chair by the 
window so that it would seem to have been rained 
on that way. When the boy brought it, it was pour¬ 
ing outside, and the wet had soaked through the 
paper wrapping.” 

There was a short silence. The mystery was 
solved. It was curious to think that this small, 
black-clad figure was the criminal. Yet—when one 
looked deep into Kitty’s eyes, one might discern 
something of her Mexican mother’s temperament and 
her time-serving father’s selfishness which could ex¬ 
plain her part in this tragely. 


THE LOST CLEW 


311 


“And did you still believe that it was Miss Meri- 
vale that you had killed?” asked Inspector Lowry. 

“Yes; I believed it until that man”—again indi¬ 
cating Jim—“came to me in the morning and told 
me of Alan’s death. It was a frightful shock.” 

“I should imagine that it might have been,” re¬ 
marked the inspector thoughtfully. “And when did 
you decide that it was—er—advisable—to get rid of 
him?” pointing to Barrison. 

“Yesterday afternoon, when he told me that you 
were bringing my sister back, and that he was go¬ 
ing to have an interview in a short time with the 
boy who had done her errands. I knew then that he 
would soon learn too much. It was that boy who 
brought me the red coat the morning after Alan’s 
death, and I did not want him to talk.” 

“But surely you did not think that investigations 
would stop just because you had got Mr. Barrison 
out of the way?” 

She shook her head. “I didn’t reason about it 
very clearly,” she said. “I had been under a good 
deal of strain, you must remember. All I thought 
of was that he was on my track, and that the 
sooner I put him where he couldn’t harm me, the 
better for me. So far as any one else was con¬ 
cerned, I suppose, if I thought of them at all, I 
thought that it was worth a chance. I’ve got out 
of some pretty tight places before now; I’m always 
inclined to hope till the last moment.” 


312 


THE SEVENTH SHOT 


“I am afraid. Miss Legaye,” said the inspector 
seriously, “that you have come to that last moment 
now.” 

She glanced at him, and she had never looked 
more charming. “Sure?” she said, in her prettiest, 
most ingenue way. “I haven’t been before a jury 
yet, you know, and—and men usually like me!” 

The inspector was red with indignation. But 
more than one of the men present suppressed a 
chuckle at his rage and Kitty’s composure. 

“Why,” asked Jim, “did you sign Miss Temple¬ 
ton’s name to that decoy telegram of yours?” 

Kitty shrugged her shoulders. “I certainly 
couldn’t sign my own, could I?” she rejoined calmly. 
“And she’d been suspected at the beginning. She 
seemed a good one to pick.” 

There was not much more to clear up, but Barri- 
son was on the point of putting one more ques¬ 
tion when an officer came in and whispered to the 
inspector. 

“Bring them in,” he said at once. 

The new arrivals were the Blankleys, accompanied 
by the detective who had found them in Indianapolis. 
They looked frightened, but Lowry quickly relieved 
their minds and assured them that they would only 
be required as witnesses. 

The meeting between the sisters was curious. 
Seeing them together for the first time, Barrison 
saw the resemblance plainly, though Rita looked 


THE LOST CLEW 313 

more Mexican than Kitty, and was, he knew, far 
the better woman of the two. 

“Well, Kit?” said she quietly, almost compassion¬ 
ately, but Kitty looked straight in front of her, and 
neither then nor at any other time deigned to recog¬ 
nize her existence. 

Barrison prompting the inspector, the latter turned 
to Marita and held out the letter which Jim had 
turned over to him the day before, the note which 
both he and the younger man had accepted as con¬ 
clusive evidence of her guilt. 

“Did you write this, Mrs. Blankley?” he asked. 

She glanced down the page and nodded. “Cer¬ 
tainly,” she responded; “when I returned the coat 
Kitty had lent me.” 

When they read it over, they found that its word¬ 
ing was innocent enough. It was only Kitty’s evil 
ingenuity which had twisted it deliberately. 

“Did you really hate me as much as all that. 
Kit?” asked Marita, almost in wonder, but Kitty 
said never a word, and did not even look in her di¬ 
rection. 

A little later, Jim Barrison was bidding Inspec¬ 
tor Lowry good-by. 

“The inquest is to-day,” remarked the inspector, 
who was smoking very hard and looking very bland 
and satisfied. “And we won’t have to have any ‘per¬ 
son or persons unknown’ verdict this time! Found 
the murderer inside of forty-eight hours 1 We didn t 
do so badly, eh, my boy?” 


314 


THE SEVENTH SHOT 


Barrison dropped his eyes to hide an involuntary 
twinkle at the “we.” 

“Splendid, sir!” he declared cordially. “Good-by! 
Fm olT to make a few extra inquiries—of a strictly 
personal nature.” 


CHAPTER XXXIII 


THE FALSE GODS GO 

W ELL?” demanded Miss Templeton, at whose 
apartment Jim Barrison presented himself in 
record time after leaving headquarters. “And is 
the case now closed?” 

“Not quite,” said Barrison, putting down his hat 
and stick deliberately and standing facing her. 

She was standing, too; and, as she was a tall 
woman, her eyes were not so very much below his 
own. She was, he thought, most splendidly beauti¬ 
ful as she stood there gravely looking at him. 

“Not quite,” he repeated, in a voice he had never 
before permitted himself to use in speaking to her. 
“I want to ask a few more questions, please?” 

She nodded, still watching him in that deep, in¬ 
tent fashion. 

“First,” pursued Jim, trying to speak steadily and 
to keep to the unimportant things, even while his 
heart was throbbing violently, “why did you always 
suspect Kitty Legaye?” 

“Because I had an instinct against her; also be¬ 
cause I was sure that she knew that man Wrenn. 
I could tell by the way that they looked at each 
other that they were not strangers, though I never 
knew them to speak to each other. And, you see, 


316 


THE SEVENTH SHOT 


I knew that he was connected with Alan Mortimer’s 
old life. The suspicion seemed to slip in naturally.” 

“And at any time—at any time, mind you—did 
you have it in your mind to kill Mortimer yourself?” 

“Never!” she returned at once, and firmly. 

He paused a moment, looking full into the clearest 
eyes that ever a woman had. 

“Grace,” he said, calling her so for the first time, 
“why did you buy that revolver?” 

She colored painfully, but her eyes met his as 
truthfully as before. “Ah, you knew that!” she said. 
“I had hoped that you did not. However, what can 
it matter now? I am very much changed since the 
day I bought that revolver. You know that, I 
think?” 

“I know it,” he acknowledged gently. 

“I was terribly hurt, terribly outraged, terribly 
disappointed. You must always remember that I 
am a woman of wild emotions. I felt myself flung 
aside—not only in love, but in my profession. I had 
lost my part, and I had lost the man who, after all, 
I had believed I loved.” 

“And did you want to kill Sybil Merivale, too?” 

She stared at him in astonishment. “Kill Sybil 
Merivale!” she repeated. “Why on earth should I? 
I had nothing against the girl, except that I believe 
I was a little jealous of her youth and freshness 
just at first. No; I had made up my mind to kill 
myself.” 

“Yourself!” 


THE FALSE GODS GO 


317 


“Yes. Didn’t you guess? I had an idea that you 
did, and that that was one reason for your keeping 
so near me all that evening in the box. I had the 
insane impulse to kill myself then and there, and 
spoil Alan’s first night!” She laughed a little, 
though shakily, at the recollection. “It was ri¬ 
diculous, melodramatic, anything you like, but 
women have done such things, and—and I’m afraid 
I am rather that sort. I meant to do it, anyway.” 

“And—why didn’t you? You had the revolver; I 
felt it in your bag on the back of the chair. Why 
didn’t you?” 

He had not known that a woman’s eyes could 
hold so much light. 

“You know,” she said softly and soberly. “You 
were there. You had come into my life. The false 
gods go when the gods arrive!” 

There was a long stillness between them, in which 
neither of them stirred, nor took their eyes away. 

“You—love me?” Jim said, in a queer voice. 

“Yes.” 

When he let her leave his arms, it was only that 
he might look again into her eyes and touch that 
wonderful golden hair, now loose and soft about 
her face. 

“It—it isn’t dyed!” she said hastily. “I did make 
up, but my hair was always that color—^truly!” 

“Oh, my dear, my dear!” he laughed, though with 
tears and tenderness behind the laughter. “What 


318 THE SEVENTH SHOT 

do I care whether it is dyed or not? It’s just a 
part of you.” 

A little later a whimsical idea came to him. 

“You know,” he said, “the inspector said to me 
yesterday that in drawing in our nets we sometimes 
found that we had captured some birds that we had 
never expected. I didn’t know how right he was, 
for—we two seem to have caught the Blue Bird of 
Happiness, after all!” 

“And I am sure,” said Grace Templeton solemnly, 
“that no one ever really caught it before!” 

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